The book: Alone In This Heavenly Cesspool

ALONE
1.
I never wanted to be anything.
I had no career ambitions, no goals, no idols. I wasn't what my father wanted, I wasn't what my mother wanted, not what my teachers, my principal, my prime minister or my community wanted.
There was nobody I wanted to be like and no direction I wished to pursue. When my teachers talked of heroes and goals, I didn't know what to think. I had no heroes. I admired no one. Everyone seemed to know something I didn’t know. They all seemed to know there was a point to being something, a point to doing anything. My fellow students wanted to be sportsmen or entrepreneurs, doctors or lawyers, or a thousand other things that seemed ridiculous to me. I had no idea what I wanted from life. I only knew that I didn't know anything and that I was just a young man.
I lie.
I did want to be something. I wanted to be happy. I wanted to smile and laugh and I didn't want to be told what to do. I wanted to be cared for more and yelled at less. I wanted everybody to stop telling me what to do. I wanted them to stop telling me how to act. I wanted them to stop telling me what to think. I wanted them to listen to me and appreciate me for simply being alive. I wanted them to leave me alone.
The only thing I ever wanted to do was be me.
But everyone seemed to disagree. It wasn't good enough for them. I had to want to be something. Caring about today was wrong. I had to care about tomorrow. Nearly everything I did was wrong or not good enough.
My parents, teachers, siblings, friends, uncles, aunties, cousins, classmates, and future colleagues disputed nearly everything I said. It seemed as if the entire population was against me. I was wrong, they were right.
I seemed to care for everyone more than they cared for me. I tried to be consistently kind to them but they didn't want to do the same for me. They seemed cruel, always finding fault in me, whilst I was kind, always finding positives in them. I tried to shyly show enthusiasm and interest in everyone. My enthusiasm was hardly ever returned. I was usually ridiculed, ignored, talked over or yelled at.
I eventually realised that no friendliness on my part, no effort, would ever change the people I met everyday. It was pointless. I began to wonder why I bothered when all I received in return was rejection. In my late teens I gave up. I decided kindness was no good, I realised I would have to learn the game of the people.
So I began.
2.
I ignored people. I feigned disinterest. When people talked, I acted bored. And it worked. By being disinterested I became interesting. By being aloof I became someone to be approached. I was beginning to understand.
My early twenties I spent in a game. A perpetual game. Every meeting, every introduction, every entry, I manipulated. Cold faced I would reply to a hello. I'd enter a work place without acknowledging anyone. Every time I was asked to go somewhere I would appear unwilling.
And it worked. It worked better than I ever thought it would. It was so easy, so uncomplicated.
My whole life I had wondered why I was disliked. All through the years I was confused by why people weren't interested in my conversation, my presence. The sole thing I had to discover, and discover it I did, was that people were intrigued when they were ignored. They wanted to understand. They wanted to be appreciated and liked. They needed it, they demanded it.
The less I cared for them the more interested in me they became. If I didn't like them, they wanted me to like them. It was ridiculous. It was sublime.
Finally, after all these years of subjugation, I was on top.
3.
As time went on more men wanted to be my friend. So I brushed them off. What use did I have for more boyfriends? I already had a few, and they were enough. My friends were as faulty and enjoyable as any other man could be. Why waste my time on inane conversation?
Women wanted me. And I gladly took what they gave. Before I changed, I'd acted like I wanted them. So they obviously had no need for me. After the change, I acted like I didn't want them, so they wanted me. They needed to be wanted.
I remember so many evenings in drunken glory, a beautiful young girl beneath me, grasping and tearing at my back, my chest, my neck, as we threw ourselves at each other. Moaning and writhing we removed ourselves from the ongoing dullness of everyday life. She would take from me and I'd give it back in return. We tore at each other, inhaling the very presence, the skin, the saliva, the touch of each other as we took control of our bodies and annihilated every damn thing around us. In ecstasy, in orgasm, we removed the shackles of stupidity the world had thrust upon us.
What I had found was a power, a power attainable with just a few easily achieved, utterly inhuman and despicable actions. If I acted like I didn't care, the women, the men, everyone, came to my side and begged me to care for them, to like them.
And I liked it.
4.
However it never sat well with me. It never felt right. Why would I need to act this way just to be accepted by my fellow human beings? Was it my fault or theirs? It was theirs. I was forced to act like that. I wanted to be kind. But being kind and open minded, quiet and understanding hadn’t worked for me. Being nice made me feel inferior and left me an outcast. My only option, if I wanted to be a part of humanity, was to act as they did, to assume the role that most everyone else had.
You see desperate people everywhere. The people that beg to be accepted, the people that tag along behind other groups, pleading to be liked and appreciated. And what happens to them? They are ignored, avoided, set aside, left behind. So what choice do you have? If you want to be accepted, if you want to be wanted, you must act like you don’t care for and don’t desire the affection of other people.
People are curious. They want to know about things they don't understand. And if someone avoids them, if they elude them, they become more determined and pathetic in their search to comprehend. It seems like madness, it seems like foolishness, it appears to be hardly believable. But it is how the world unfortunately is.
5.
Ever since I was a child I've watched the waitresses in cafes and restaurants and thought, You look the most alive. They smiled and portrayed beauty and confidence as they weaved around and between the tables, bringing the people what they so desperately wanted. As I grew older I began to see just how attractive these women were. All the other women looked drab and dull compared to the curvaceous, happy, feminine beauties bringing my food.
As I grew older I decided to work in bars so I could be close to them. As a teenager I worked in an espresso bar and realised my dream. There, in the afternoons after school, I stood next to these young women in their tight clothing and smiling faces, and I felt the first pangs of want. I never had them at the age of sixteen but they served to make my lonely nights exciting.
It didn’t always work out for me. I worked a series of jobs in kitchens, supermarkets, in warehouses. I worked the miserable jobs that make you wish you were somewhere else. The jobs that make you wish you were thousands of miles away or dead and buried in the ground.
6.
Eventually I went to university and studied something I despised, commerce.
I didn't know what to do with my life. But all the people around me were going to university. I was smart enough to be accepted and it was normal and expected to get a student loan and enroll. We were all told that if you didn't go, you would fail in life. I didn't like university but I had no idea what to do. It was better than driving a forklift. The best thing about the place was that it took up time. It gave me time to think.
But I didn't like it there. The lectures were dull and the assignments tedious. The place was full of people who did no work whilst studying things they didn’t like. I didn't care about commerce but I was so afraid of the negative perceptions of an arts degree that I didn't pursue the one thing that could at least be interesting. Money is what they said I should want so I studied commerce.
I wanted to leave but I didn’t want to disappoint everyone. At this time I was still connected to my friends and family, I still cared for them, I was still more concerned for their feelings than I was for mine. I was only an apprentice at being myself. I was still too considerate of what others wanted of me.
When I finished the degree I worked in two offices. These jobs were bearable for a while, the pay was good, the work repetitive and after a month or two I was always depressed and approaching suicide. I had no desire to live a repetitive life. I would rather be dead.
7.
After quitting the second job I bought a one way ticket from Auckland to Melbourne. There was so much confusion amongst my employers and my family members.
Why would you quit a good job? You can earn good money, you can set yourself up in life.
I would listen and nod and try to explain myself but I always failed.
I could never make them understand that I thought setting yourself up on a rigid, organised path at a young age was the most self depreciating thing you could do. To me it seemed as if they wanted me to strangle myself.
I struggled to tell them that I cared for houses, cars, lounge suites and fashionable clothes like I cared for cancer in my testicles.
It seemed to them that I was against life, that I was cynical and unhappy. They were partly right. I was unhappy and I was partly cynical. But I was more for life than any of them. I was for the unknown. I felt they were the ones that hated life, they were the ones that were so against living. They were the ones that built a comfortable shelter from the everyday excitements and horrors. They were the ones that plugged their ears with dollar bills and covered their eyes with gold coins.
In a cotton filled, cushioned environment, you can ignore almost everything around you. In comfortable normality you can easily become a blind deaf dumb half-being riding an exercycle in a temperate tomb, gorging on all the nutrients and oxygen you need until you die. You hardly ever feel a thing.
Sure, at times I appeared cynical. How can you not be cynical in a world built like this? A world that serves marvellously the thirsts of a small group of content people and pisses all over the rest of them.
But deep down, beneath my swearwords and my sneers I was the most optimistic person amongst all the frightened, desolate sons of bitches around me. I wanted to see more, to feel more, to experience more, to give, laugh, talk, walk, yell and cry more. I wanted to be alive. I didn’t want to give up on myself yet, to live my life in working repetition, in the pointless gathering of assets until I died.
I didn't want to be idle. We’ve always had to work. In some form or other we've always had to buy, hunt, grow or find food, to build or buy shelter. But working like this? Working each pointless day just to reward ourselves with four hours in font of the television? Working in offices, everyone dressed the same, occupying two square metres of space, acting and treated as little more than an automaton? A human being is alive. How can we do this to ourselves? A monkey wouldn't stand for it. A monkey would stop eating and die. It’s just so damn ugly and depressing to watch.
Working each day in relative comfort is better than chipping rocks each day for a bowl of stale rice. It is better than digging for gold with a machine gun trained on your head. But that doesn’t mean it’s right.
If this was all we could achieve, us amazing intelligent human beings, if all we could achieve was the daily destruction of the minds and bodies of the majority of the worlds population, then what I wanted to see was everyone sacrifice themselves. I wanted to see them gladly and willingly stop working like that. I wanted to sit around with them and watch the economy collapse. I wanted to be hungry, desperate and maybe miserable. In the current scheme of things we seem to be miserable most of our lives anyway, so what does it matter?
I wanted us all to sit back and watch our way of life die so we could let the earth survive. I thought it’d be a nice sacrifice. I'd always found the earth more beautiful and deserving of my kindness than any human being I’d ever met.
Life would eventually kick the shit out of me but for the time being I stuck with my ideals.
8.
I flew to Melbourne. At my farewell there were tears and reluctant good wishes and I cared for none of it. I arrived and stayed in a hostel. As with every hostel, it was disgusting and depressing so I soon found a house to live in and began applying for jobs.
Before I found my dream job I had a string of depressing ones. The first was in a pool hall named ‘The Pool Hall’. The job was giving people beers, picking up the bottles when they’d finished the beers and emptying ashtrays. It didn’t seem difficult. It was a simple, stupid job made for an idiot. It was perfect.
But the manager didn’t seem to think so. He seemed to think it was an important job with many intricacies and difficulties that had to be shown and explained to me. He was a fool. He didn’t even own the place and he actually cared. He cared that another man would make money from his hard work. It was hard to understand.
I was different. If there was something I couldn’t do on the job, I gave up and didn’t do it. If someone asked for a drink that I didn’t know I’d say we were out of stock. If I didn’t know the price of something, it was out of stock. Everything was out of stock. It was simple.
I didn’t like working behind the bar, there were too many questions and conversations. Instead I’d slowly walk around the big pool hall picking up bottles and emptying ashtrays. I’d watch the girls. Always subtly and without making them feeling uncomfortable. I watched and admired the girls more than their soft-cocked boyfriends ever did. The boyfriends would catch me looking at their girls and sneer. I’d sneer back at them, look away in disgust and continue slowly emptying ashtrays and picking up bottles.
It was a good job but the manager was looking for someone more career orientated. He had a mohawk haircut. I was fired.
9.
I lay around the house for a few weeks drinking beer and going for long walks. As I lay around I wondered if I’d made the right decision. I didn’t see how working in pool halls was better than working in an office. I made a lot less money. Both the jobs were depressing. Both lives weren’t really giving me anything.
The only difference I could find was that I was alone. Nobody asked me questions. Nobody wanted to know what my goals were. Nobody asked if I had any ambition. I didn’t have to explain myself to anyone. To explain myself would take at least ten hours. And most people only like to listen for about two sentences: then they want to talk.
Talking never got me anywhere. At least not the talking most people did. I’d say the simplest thing, I’d barely begin to say what I wanted to say, I would just begin an explanation, and then the other person would butt in with, ‘but what about this, have you thought about that!?’
Of course I’ve thought about that! I'd think, I just haven’t got to it yet! That’s why I gave up talking to most people. There was no point talking to them, it just made me angry.
I walked all over Melbourne's inner city suburbs. Fitzroy, Collingwood, St Kilda, the CBD, etc. I’d see a street or a corner I hadn’t been down and I’d go there. Each time something caught my eye I walked towards it. I never stopped to think were to go, I always knew. One direction always looked more interesting than the other. I guess I was looking for something. A way out, a way in, anything that wasn’t the same as everything else.
After a few weeks I was running low on money. I never did anything. It seemed to be the most enjoyable thing to do. So I came to the conclusion I should do nothing as much as possible. Which meant I spent all my money. So I had to go back to work. I could never win.
10.
My second job in my new town was at an espresso bar in Fitzroy. It was called Nucleor. I applied for the job because of a brunette goddess behind the bar. That was my sole criteria for choosing jobs: women. I didn’t care about pay, hours, location or career opportunities.
It made sense to me. I’ve never experienced any one thing that made me more excited than women. I’ve never felt the need to try heroin. If you are going to be in a workplace all dreary day long, you may as well be surrounded by things that excite you.
People say you get personal fulfilment through pushing yourself and achieving your goals. It’s a lie. A man gets personal fulfilment when a women he’s violently attracted to desperately rips the clothes from his body and begs him to fuck her. That’s personal fulfilment.
The brunette was the sole reason I asked for the job. I went in for a trial the next day. I did the trial and got the job. Then they told me I was hired to replace my beauty. I’d only applied for the job to meet her. I was distraught. I immediately thought of quitting. I gave up entirely on the job, I gave up on life. I was rude and didn’t do a thing at work. So they fired me. And I was happy.
I’d rather be without work, I’d rather sit in parks reading or lying in dark rooms staring at the ceiling, than do any stupid job just for the sake of making money. If I hated my job and I had money for one months rent and food, I always quit. I had two months rent and food so I decided to take my time getting a job.
11.
I lived with a girl in Collingwood. When I moved in I realised there was somebody that slept on my lounge floor. His name was Bernie, he was from England, he stank, he smoked a lot of weed, he was drunk all the time, he was apparently a computer genius, he wouldn’t shut up and he was always there when I wanted to be alone. She hadn’t told me about him.
So I’d been fired from the job. I was glad for it. I sat around the house drinking beer, listening to Bernie. He went on and on and on. He didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t listening. He didn’t seem to care if he was being interesting. He thought he was interesting. But he couldn’t read my face or body actions to actually confirm that he was being interesting.
These people are everywhere. They talk with loud voices wherever they are. At home, walking down the street, in a café, on a bus or talking into a mobile phone in the library. You can always hear them and they won’t shut the hell up. They seem to be totally oblivious and ignorant of everyone and everything around them. You yawn, you look the other way, you start drawing pictures, you get up and go into the other room, and they keep damn talking. The more you act disinterested the louder they talk. It’s as if they think you can’t hear them, as if that’s why you’re acting bored. You can’t do anything for them, they’re an absolute pain in the ass and you can’t get away from them. Once you know one they never leave you alone unless you move cities. They’ll find you wherever you are. In the supermarket, at the cinema, sitting in a park, they will always find you and talk at you loudly. You look around and want to apologise to the other people around you, you want to say, look, I’m sorry, I know it’s annoying, I don’t approve of this either, I’d gladly kill them if I could get away with it.
Bernie was one of these people. He’d lean towards me, his hot stinking breath scalding my face and tell me tall stories of his computer genius. He told me he’d made the security systems for the biggest banks in Australia, he told me they were unbreakable, that they were the best security codes ever made. He told me he could do whatever he wanted when he worked there. He told me he’d come to work at midday, unshaven, in bare feet, a singlet and the shortest shorts he could find. He told me they paid him whatever he wanted and they idolised him. I never asked, but I was always interested, why he slept on a thin dirty mattress on my lounge floor. Some days he made me sandwiches and bought me beer. He wasn’t so bad all the time.
12.
I ran out of money and phoned another job. It was for a kitchen hand. I was to cut vegetables and clean dishes. Once again, it seemed like a job I could do. I arrived for the trial. When I saw the place I decided to go straight home without introducing myself. It was cold and stale, everything was new chrome or plastic and white, and all the staff wore uniforms and looked happy. Happy in a fake way, with smiles that showed they were dead inside. Then I saw and heard a beautiful tall Italian girl with a thick accent. I decided to stay. I needed the money. They got me to work.
Again, the manager took the job very seriously.
“Do you have any experience?” she asked
“I've washed pots and cut vegetables quite often before,” I said.
“That’s good,” she said.
I was proud of myself.
She had a specific way for doing everything. The pots had to be washed a certain way and the vegetables had to be cut a certain way. It wasn’t good enough if the pots were washed and vegetables cut, they had to be done a certain way. I was about to walk out. Then the Italian girl walked up to me and kissed me on the cheek and said,
“Hello I’m Maria.”
“Hello,” I said, “I’m Willem.”
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m washing pots”.
She was amazing. She glowed and her eyes embarrassed me. I was in love and I knew I could do this job.
The other staff were nothing to me. Enthusiastic, fast moving, excitable idiots. I didn’t pay them any attention except when I wanted something for myself. Like food or a drink. The manager gave me an apron to wear. It had a floral pattern on it. I asked for a black one. She said, we all wear these. Well, I thought, you’re all as stupid as flies. It was a silly thing to think but you can’t control that sometimes.
I felt like a fool, I looked ridiculous. Everyone looked ridiculous. Apart from Maria. She looked like an angel. I wanted her to come to my house and wear the floral apron for me.
I managed to put up with the job for a long time. Four months. It was a long time for me. I had no long term goals. I wasn't the model employee or the dreamed for son.
Maria kept me going. She gave me big hugs when I arrived and big hugs when I left. She had a boyfriend but I didn’t care. I ignored him and adored Maria. As long as she was there each day, I could make it through. I was saving money so I could quit again.
One day the manager and her plain faced assistant came in wearing huge disgusting smiles and carrying two boxes. I began to feel sick. I couldn’t stand the sight of her.
“Guess what?” she said, “We’ve got new uniforms!”
All the staff were excited. I reached for the kitchen knife. She opened the boxes and took out a range of brightly coloured polo tee shirts. There was baby blue, a canary yellow and pink. In a variety of sizes. I was the tallest one there. The only colour that fit me was pink.
At this time in my life I was only wearing black. I was protesting against something. I think I was protesting against everybody. I took the pink tee shirt she gave me, threw it on the floor under the sink and continued washing my pots. I could feel the manager staring at me, trying to burn my back with her weak little eyes. It wasn’t working.
I walked into her office at the end of my shift, threw the pink tee shirt and filthy floral apron in her lap.
“I’m quitting, no notice.”
I walked out smiling.
13.
I lay around the house for a few weeks. My life was still going nowhere. I didn’t mind it too much. As long as I was doing nothing I had an alright time.
Some days I couldn’t get of bed. But that’s normal for anyone forced to live in the world we live in. If you don’t lay in bed occasionally, gripping the sheets in fear, you’re not thinking enough. If you think continuously about fingernails, dysentery, pubic hair, the black plague, advertising, genocide, agriculture, hurricanes, the sun, bikinis, incest, telephones and tidal waves for long enough, it’s quite easy to see how you might go insane.
At these times I found alcohol a good cure. Don’t be afraid of alcohol. Be afraid of people that tell you alcohol is bad. They’re the ones that don’t think. They’re the ones that start fascist regimes, oil companies and religious sects.
I had a friend in Melbourne named Russell. He worked on music video sets. He took people food and cleaned up after people. It was an honest job and he hated it. Russell had more friends than me. A lot of people had more friends than me. One night we went to a party of people he knew. I didn’t like parties. Each time I went to a party I would dislike myself and everyone else a little more. When people stood around in groups talking idiotically I could never say anything. They’re all too quick witted for me. I'd say something, no one would laugh, I'd sit in a corner and drink.
I went upstairs and climbed out of a window onto a balcony. There was a girl up there that I’d admired and talked to earlier in the evening. I hadn’t done a bad job of talking either. I hadn't made a fool of myself I sat down and said hello. She said hello back. We talked a little bit. She looked cold so I gave her one of my jackets. I always wore too many clothes. I didn’t like to be cold and I didn’t like to be hot. I liked to be at a perfect temperature. So I usually carried too many clothes with me so I could dress or undress to calm my neuroses.
We kept talking. She was a beautiful tall thin girl, with nicely shaped shoulders and long legs clad in tight jeans. Her brown hair was cut into a cute fringe and she wore only a small amount of makeup. I wanted her. I was talking away, maybe a little too much, when I noticed she wasn’t listening. I immediately stopped and asked her a question about herself. She still wasn’t listening. I’d screwed it up. I was a bumbling fool, I hated myself, I had to leave, I was never going to get another girl in my life.
The girl stood up, lent over the balcony and threw up. It was the worse response I’ve ever had to myself. I’d actually made someone physically ill. Things weren’t looking up for me. I thought about going back to Auckland. I thought lightly about suicide. Like other men think about buying a new TV. I knew I couldn’t cut my wrists, it would be too painful. I could never throw myself off something, the thought of hitting the pavement was too gruesome. I wondered if I knew anyone with sleeping pills. I’d tell them I was having trouble sleeping and then I’d sleep for a very long time.
The girl went inside. “Sorry,” she said, “I’ve had too much to drink.” It wasn’t me! I forgot about killing myself. Another girl came outside. She had a huge beautiful smile on her face. Her eyes were round and they sparkled. Her hair was long and light brown with streaks in it. She wore her hair up and messy. She had thick mascara on her eyes and she was the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.
Her name, strangely, was Lala. I asked her to sit down. We talked and talked and drank and drank. I was having the time of my life. I was at the very top of the world. Things could hardly get better. I’d made the best decision of my life to come to Melbourne. Soon I’d have a great job and Lala would be my girlfriend. We’d be happy and everyone would be envious of us.
We decided to go back to my house. We walked home, stopping and kissing and grabbing at each other. Lala was drunk. So was I, but she was worse. I was a little concerned. I didn’t like bringing girls back to my house when they were too drunk, it felt a bit seedy. I wasn’t that sort of man.
I was all for fun, drinking and bedding down but only when the girls knew what they were doing. We got home, lay on the bed and Lala passed out. I put a sheet over her and went to the kitchen for a drink and a cigarette.
My dream of finding a life worth living was over. I was a loser again. I’d clear ashtrays and cut vegetables for the rest of my life. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I thought, maybe I should go back to Auckland, get a nice safe office job and get on with life as it was meant to be. I went to bed.
We woke up the next morning hung over. Lala still had her clothes on. So did I. I made sure of that. Nobody was going to accuse me of anything. She smiled at me. I smiled at her. She said she was going home. I said ok and felt optimistic again.
It always seemed to work like that. Hardly anyone can get together unless they’re drunk. I certainly couldn't. We all seem so scared of each other, so embarrassed of ourselves. We stand around talking to each other, trying to be witty and entertaining, all the way internally saying, “Please like me, please accept me, I know I don’t come across as that great but deep down I’m a sweet person, I’m a good person, I’m good to be with.”
Most people can’t just walk up to someone they like. People now date over the internet. They write to each other for months. They write to each other free from the nervousness of sitting in front of someone trying to impress them. They can say what they really want to say. They can delete anything stupid they are about to say before they say it. It’s all so fake, so dull, so idiotic and inhuman. People have a hard time getting along together.
Sometimes I think we’d be better off without words. We should just wait for that animal attraction that occurs between people, no matter how ugly you or they are, walk up to them, grab them, take them home and keep them for the rest of your life. If two people are only a little attracted to each other, but not violently attracted to each other, if they drunkenly get together, it never lasts. Even if they date for a few years, get married, and have kids, they always end up hating each other. If you settle for someone who the very sight of doesn’t make you shiver with passion and lust, you are doomed.
I continued to see Lala. She wasn’t that interested in me. She was Irish and in Australia for a year. She wanted to live and have experiences, make friends and meet lots of people. She didn’t want a boyfriend. She thought it would be too restrictive, she wouldn’t get to do all the things she dreamed of. She was deluded. I just wanted to drink with her and roll around naked in bed. Of course, I couldn’t say this, she would’ve taken offence.
14.
I was running out of money again. I applied for a job in a place that looked good. It was a bar called Stop, it was going to be my own little heaven. It was another job that was going nowhere. Another job that offered no chance at job advancement, skill development or financial security. All those things that other people wanted and thought I needed.
I didn’t give a damn. I knew it felt wrong to sit in and office with fifteen other depressed people, all of us giving up on life, giving up on enjoyment. I knew it felt right to stand behind a small bar with the breasts of a busty 21 year old rubbing against my back as she squeezed past. There didn’t seem to be any doubt, I had made the right choice.
I was hired at Stop. The job was perfect. Amongst the dull, smiling, talkative, jocular boys with ‘personality’ and the ugly sexless, lifeless moles that worked there, there were beautiful women. There were usually three. And when they quit, they were replaced by another. And there was me. Each night I worked next to them. I admired them, talked to them, ignored them, flirted with them. I would watch them as they smiled and moved, bent over and stood up straight. I wasn’t, and never have been, lecherous or creepy, I was simply appreciative. Never did I touch them or talk to them inappropriately, I just loved being in their company, in their presence.
There were usually three goddesses working there but if not there was nearly always one. And if there wasn’t, if there was only me, if I had no one to admire, no one to desire, I would fall to pieces. I would leave work early, I would complain, I would hate my very existence. Without the girls, there was no point to working there, I may as well be chipping rocks or installing aluminium joinery. I was bored. I may as well have been dead.
I would watch the other men as they came to the bar to get their drinks. I watched them drink the liquor that quelled the fire burning inside them. I watched them drink the booze that made each night and each sleep bearable whilst dreading the next day at work. I’m watched them drink the alcohol that made each day at work bearable as they dreamt of the drinks that evening. I watched them as they came in and I watched them as they watched the girls I worked with.
They were envious of me. Not of my job. They laughed at me for my job. My subservient, take orders and money, mop up beer spills and clean glasses job. But they were envious of my relationship with the girls, the understanding that I had with these beautiful creatures. These men would never have what I had. They were on one side of the bar and we were on the other. They had ambition and career advancement and we had each other. I had late nights tearing at hair, at chests, at legs, grabbing at beautiful soft bodies. I never felt bad, I never disliked my job, I looked forward to it, I pined for my evenings in the company of these beautiful women.
Whenever a customer or another male employee would talk to me it made me furious. It was intolerable. They would destroy the dream world I had created for myself. I never once paid attention to the job. I would work hard and do the right things, but only because I wanted to keep my job, to keep my own little utopia. But I didn’t care. I never cared what happened, I had no interest in what happened. I worked hard to make things go smoothly, to avoid all disruptions to my peace. I wanted nothing more than for one of my beautiful angels to be standing in front of me, asking a question or silent, looking at me or looking away, smiling or frowning. However they were or acted, I did not mind. As long as they were there near me for me to enjoy and appreciate them.
However, it was always in the back of my mind. If I live past two years from now, what am I going to do with my life? There didn’t seem to be a single job I wanted. I’d tried working with responsibility and working without responsibility. Without responsibility was better but it was still boring as all hell.
I didn't care about business. The arts were good but I had no talent I knew of. Everything seemed impossible. What was I going to become? I never knew. Despite all of my self assurance and because of all my over whelming self doubts, I was concerned.
The best way to deal with it was to go to work with the girls, go to a bar after work with one of the girls, get drunk with her, laugh with her then go home with her. She enjoyed herself, I enjoyed myself, we weren’t mean or cruel to each other, we just liked fucking each other. At that time, at that moment, as the alcohol swirled through our brains and bodies, me on top, her ripping my back with her nails, our eyes wild with fire and lust, staring at each other, our tongues sucking anything they could find, it was at those times that we were glad to be alive. It felt damn good.
15.
I continued to work at the bar for a few months. One day a girl walked in. I was struck stupid. I stood there not moving, watching her, following her, amazed. She had shoulder length clean brown hair that flicked on her shoulders and away from her head. She had on tight blue jeans that were low of her hips. She wore a loose old yellow singlet that flowed from her body, touching her torso in places, magically showing off her curves, her breasts, her hips, her womanliness, her everything. She had on a small head band on and bangles all over her arms, necklaces on her neck. Her skin was a light brown, her lips were thin, her smile wide and her eyes flashed! She looked like a goddess, I was taken, I was inconsolable, I didn’t have a word for anybody. I didn’t do a thing for the rest of the night.
She came in a few times after that. She ordered from me. I couldn’t handle it. I wanted to tell her that she was the finest girl in the world, that I cared about no one else, that I would never look at another women whilst she was alive. She just asked for a beer and went away. She smiled at me and it was the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. Her eyes destroyed me, I was a wreck.
She came in again. I asked her what she did for work. She said she was a model. It made sense. She had no other purpose. God had sent her for us to marvel at and admire her. She was human perfection. Everyone else looked like walking, talking, skin bags of shit.
She complained about her job.
“It’s not so bad,” I told her as I opened a beer for her, threw an old bottle in the bin, emptied an ashtray and wiped the bench, “putting on clothes and taking them off, standing there being photographed.”
She agreed and laughed. I was so funny I could hardly believe it.
“I’m Willem,” I said.
“I’m Moana,” she said, “Nice to meet you.”
You too, I thought, you too.
16.
She came in another time. She told me she was planning to film the models back stage at the next runway, catwalk, fashion event she was working at. I asked if she needed an assistant. I was fooling around. A women like that needs no one. She could save the world in a week and still have time to look beautiful.
She said she did need someone to help. I think that was the best moment of my ridiculous life.
“Ok,” I said, “what do I have to do?”
“Wait here,” she said, “I’ll be back later to bring you a back stage pass.”
I had no other choice, my shift didn’t finish for another six hours.
She came back later that evening with a back stage pass. It was a gift from God, if there was a man, such a thing. I believed in him then. I believed in angels too, one was standing in front of me.
I had a back stage pass to a fashion shoot. Do you know what this means? Even women should understand. If it was a male model shoot, I’m sure you’d be glad to be standing around with nothing to do but watch.
So I rushed home after work. I had to sleep well so I’d look gorgeous for my starlet. Obviously, I didn’t sleep well. I was too excited. I just lay there thinking about legs, breasts, necks and hair. I dreamed of how charming I would be. It would never work out but that was the great thing about dreaming, in the dream, you were all the things you’d never be.
17.
The next morning I got out of bed and dressed. I wasn’t well slept and I couldn’t exactly be well dressed. I didn’t have the clothes to be well dressed in. So I wore jeans and a tee shirt. It was all I had and I had always thought that was all I needed. Expensive clothing had always seemed ridiculous to me. Now I seemed ridiculous. Anyway, so there I was, unslept, in old jeans and tee shirt, holding a back stage pass to utopia looking pathetically excited. At least I’d shaved.
I made my way to the event centre in Richmond where the runway, catwalk, fashion event was held. I phoned Moana. She was sitting on the grass out back. I went to the grass out back.
Moana was there with three other models. And her mum. The other models were stunning but really just looked like rotting carcasses next to Moana. Moana’s mum was there and she had a wrinkled face, dreadlocked hair and crooked brown teeth. But I saw where Moana got her eyes from. If you could ignore every other part of Moana’s mother and just look at her eyes, then she was beautiful too.
They were smoking a joint. They passed it to me and I said no. Dope would only clam me up. And I was clammed up enough most of the time anyway. What with all the stupid things people say and the insane things they do everyday, it was hard to get a word in.
They finished the joint and we went inside. It was in a huge convention centre. We walked past the runway and up to the back changing area. I walked past the security guard holding up my back stage pass. I tried to act cool but he knew it was my first time back stage. And then I was inside.
It was like legally being in the girls changing room. It was legally being in the girls changing room. I felt bashful, ashamed, and a bit out of place. So I stood in the corner, trying not to look at anyone but looking everywhere. There were mirrors all over the room. It was a huge space, about 400 square metres, with girls, mirrors, hair, clothes, assistants, boobs, hairspray and make up everywhere.
And one seedy fucker that didn’t belong there. Standing in the corner, very, very excited.
Moana came up to me and asked me to come outside for a cigarette. I needed some fresh air anyway. All the femininity was making my head spin. We walked outside. Out the back were a few other models. I was introduced, they said something, I smiled and didn’t pay attention.
Then the hag came outside. She was Moana’s manager. And manager for a few of the other girls. She was old and gaunt, her face was sucked in like a deflated balloon. She had a yellow brown pallor to her face and she was heavily wrinkled. Her eyes were sunk in her sockets and I knew she had snorted a lot of coke in her strange life. She had once been a model but now she was just a hag telling other models what to do. She came out and asked Moana what I was doing there. Moana told the hag I was helping her film
“I’m not comfortable with him being in there.” Said the hag, “There are young girls in there and I think it’s inappropriate.”
I agreed with the hag. I didn’t want to go but I didn’t feel too comfortable either.
“It’s not appropriate for you to be in there,” continued the hag, this time at me, “it’ll make the girls uncomfortable, it’s not appropriate.”
She went on and on.
“Look,” I interrupted her and said, “I don’t care, I won’t go back in.”
“You’re not even listening to me!” Screamed the hag, “It’s inappropriate for you to be in there!”
“I am listening,” I said whilst suppressing the will to knock the old bitch out, “I told you I’m not going back in there, you’re repeating yourself, leave-me-alone-the-fuck-alone.”
The hag looked at me in astonishment.
“Who is this guy?” She turned to Moana and asked, “I don’t want him coming back inside.”
Moana took her crap because she had to. The hag made Moana money. Moana needed money for food and a house. Just like everyone else. Life was full of these little concessions. The hag went inside. I said goodbye to the hag as she walked past. She ignored me. There was too much coke in her mind to see or care about anybody but herself.
Moana apologised. I told her not to worry about it. I told her to phone me when she was done. I said I'd be out front with all the common people.
I left the back and went to the front of stage. I went to where the catwalk was. Where all the normal people were. I felt out of place. I made sure everyone could see my back stage pass. I wanted them to know I wasn’t a part of them. I was different. The fashion show began. I went over to where the professional photographers were. I had a big camera with me. I had my pass. I looked official.
I began taking photos of the girls too. Bad photos. I’d never been a good photographer and I hardly knew why I had a camera on me, let alone why I owned one. I was annoying the professional photographers. They took their photos seriously, me I was fooling around. I pressed the button too late and my flash would go off a second after the pros. I was sure I was ruining their photos. They kept turning back and looking at me angrily. I smiled at them. We were all pros together. I had a backstage pass.
Moana walked out on to the cat walk. I began taking photos like crazy. My camera didn’t stop. The pros gave up, I was too annoying. Moana stopped at the end of the cat walk, did her pose, smiled at me, turned and walked away. I took a photo of her walking away. She had a nice backside. I wanted a photo. My flash went off and I was embarrassed. Nobody else was taking photos of backsides. I took my camera down and looked at the flash. I pretended it went off accidentally. I went outside.
Moana came and met me.
“You looked beautiful,” I said.
“I didn’t know you were a photographer,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“What are you doing now?” She asked.
I didn’t know. She asked me to come back to her place. I was excited. And I said yes.
Another model offered us a lift. She had a car, a nice car. She was eighteen, she modelled, she had a car, she went to a nice school, her boyfriend played professional Aussie football, she was happy. I wanted to strangle her.
It was all just a little too easy. A little asphyxiation might sort her out. I didn’t do anything and I thought, oh well, it’s good for her, life will be ok. She won’t have to clean toilets for a living or beg people for money. She won’t starve or be beaten and she’ll hardly ever think about it. She may see the evening news and feel sad when she sees the horrors of the world, but her beefy boyfriend will give her a muscly hug and tell her she’s beautiful and everything would be safe again. That’s all it took. A two second hug, a compliment, and these people were happy again.
The girl dropped us off. I left some rubbish in her car. Moana’s brother was with us. He went to the shop to get soft drinks. Me and Moana walked to her house. She lived in a unit behind a house. The path was dark and wet and Moana had no shoes on so she asked me to carry her. I gladly did. Then we went inside.
It was a small room with two singles beds in it. She lived with her sister who wasn’t there. There was a path on the floor. A path between the rubbish and clothes, a path to each of the beds. It was disgusting. It was a contrast. The beauty and the total filth she lived in.
Her brother brought back the drinks. We opened them and sucked on them. Moana started sucking on bongs. So did her brother but Moana did the most. Maybe eight, maybe ten. I started getting bored and a little disgusted. I said goodbye, that I’d call her again. I left a little disconcerted but I was still in love with her face and her body. But I didn’t like her filth and her bongs.
18.
I went back to work the next night. I dragged myself through the evening, saying hello, yes you can have that, here it is, it costs this much, thank you, here’s your change, etc.
I talked with the girls and it wasn’t too bad. I thought of Moana. I thought of her on the stage, everyone eyeing her, everyone wanting her, and I thought of her in her filthy shack sucking on bongs. I was confused and I couldn’t wait to see her again.
19.
Later that week I phoned Moana and we organised to meet at a bar on her side of town. She said one of her friends might be coming along so I brought one of mine. So Russell and I took the train and the tram and then we were in the bar drinking pints. It was good.
Moana showed up half an hour late. I’d told Russel all about how beautiful she was and when she arrived I saw he agreed. She seemed a bit shaky, her words weren’t coming out right, but after a few beers she was ok. After the beer she was her usual extroverted, entertaining self. I was enthralled. Her friend Alicia showed up. We introduced. Russell, Alicia, Willem, Moana. Alicia, Willem, Moana, Russell.
We went to another bar. We bought jugs of beer and played pool. Moana and I against Alicia and Russell. We won. We were good. I’d spent a lot of time in bars drinking and playing pool. Evidently, so had Moana. We finished playing and I talked to Moana while Russell talked to Alicia. Russell wanted a girl, needed a girl, so the night was working out for both of us.
Moana and I were sitting on a couch away from everyone.
“Listen,” she said, “will you spend the night with me?”
“Yes.”
I was awestruck. Here was the most beautiful girl I knew asking me to spend the night with her. We sat there hands on each others legs. I was exploding. I went to the toilet. Russell was in there too. I told him what happened. He shook my hand. Which was a strange thing to do. Then again it’s not every night you go home with the girl of your dreams.
The four of us left the bar and piled into a taxi. We were all drunk. We went back to Moana’s place. Russell came back too. In the taxi Moana talked about getting some porno movies from the video store. I thought it was a bit strange but I also thought, I like this girl, she’s lively. We got back to the house and drank some more.
Moana ripped open Russell’s shirt and put make up on his face and chest. He looked ridiculous and hilarious. He also looked a little frightened. Me, I didn’t care. I was up for anything. Moana took photos of him and I laughed. Eventually Russell understandably wanted to go home. I gave him taxi money. After all I’d been the one who dragged him out here. Russell left and Alicia went to bed.
Moana sat on top of me. I was excited. This was good, this was very good. I expected to be taken into the bedroom. But it turned out Moana slept on the thin mattress on the floor in the lounge. They were her clothes strewn everywhere. I should have guessed.
I carried her to the little mattress, we ripped our clothes off and attacked each other. Pretty soon Moana was on her knees. Evidently she liked it that way and I had no problem with it. We went at each other for an hour, taking short breaks in along the way, then I fell back exhausted.
As I lay there feigning sleep, Moana sucked back eight or so bongs, took a couple of capsule pills out of her bag, twisted them open, poured the contents down her throat, then came and lay down next to me. I was confused and maybe a little concerned but I’d just had damn good sex with a beautiful girl. So I let it slide.
20.
We woke up the next morning and walked to the tram stop. We bought juice from the store and waited for the tram. The tram came, we got on, went to the train station, got off, waited for the train, got on, arrived in the city and got off. It seemed as though that was all life was. Waiting for something, riding it for a while, then getting off and wondering where to go. Be it relationships or jobs, it was all the same. Get on, ride for a while, get off, wait for something else.
I kissed Moana goodbye at Flinders Street and went home to bed. I lay there thinking. Moana had been very easy to pursue, she smoked a lot of bongs, she lived on a mattress in a room filled with her filth and she took strange pills late in the night. She scared me but she was exciting. Hell, I lived in a room that was dirty most of the time, I drunk far too much, I served beers to lonely unhappy people, I cleaned up puke and cleared ashtrays. I figured we were equal.
21.
I was still seeing a little of Lala at this time. She still wanted to meet people and be free and all that crap. I didn’t care if she wanted to do that, I just wished she wouldn’t treat me so poorly. She was sleeping with me but she was no good at it. She hadn’t really been much fun to be with. She was frigid and boring and whenever I hung out with her I left feeling bad. I tried to give her love but she was always standoffish. It’s destructive for your wellbeing to be the only person trying in a relationship. You start to look desperate, you become pathetic and needy and you get depressed.
I decided it was best to call it off. I’d told Moana about her and she agreed. Girls don’t really like it when you’re sleeping with someone else. Nobody does. I called Lala and told her it was over. Of course when I did that she wanted me more. It’s always the same. People are predictable.
I was in love with Moana. I saw her as often as I could. She was so beautiful and caring to everyone around her. She was also unpredictable. Her behaviour was erratic. Some days she would be the most enjoyable, loving person I’d ever been around, others days she was nasty and depressed. She was wild. And I loved her for it but I knew I should run away. There was trouble, and only trouble, brewing.
But she also seemed as if she needed somebody. She did need somebody. And I'd always found it difficult to walk away from people that needed me. I'd always felt too much pity for people. The world is shit and rough and I figured if I could do something to improve the lives of desperate people, well, why not? I was pathetic like that.
If I was going to get on in this world, I was going to have to start being more callous and selfish. It’s how you get up, it’s how you climb ladders. You stand on the heads of others and you get to the top. No looking back, run for the prize, a big medal and certificate with your name and face printed on it.
22.
Moana worked with a advertising photographer. His name was Deryk. He was of Polish descent, about 45 years old, a solid strong man with long slicked back silver hair. He wore black sleeveless tee shirts, silver necklaces, tight black jeans and leather boots with buckles. He was approaching insanity and good at his job. He was rich and he was drunk from ten in the morning. He was rough and fun yet frightening to be around.
He had a studio in Melbourne’s Prahran. It was a large warehouse. The main storage area had a huge white wall as his photography backdrop. There was a reception and a make up room. He had a bar which was hardly ever stocked because he drank it all. I identified with this. He had an entertainment centre surrounded with deep leather couches. Upstairs he had a dressing room filled with clothes and costumes. There was a room with a spa for ten people and more deep leather couches. He had what he called an exercise room. It was a room encircled with seats and in the middle was a platform with a dancing pole. He had a computer room with three computers and he had four people working for him.
He was a dirty old drunk genius that loved to live. But you could tell he was scared and frightened most of the time. Hence the drinking and the constant pill popping.
Moana and I would go to his studio and I’d get drunk with him. He seemed to enjoy my company. I was one of the few people that could understand him. I could understand most people. It was me that no one understood.
23.
I continued to see Moana and I continued to work. The days were passing and nothing was really happening. I’d work, I’d sleep, I’d have two days off where I’d lie around, or go to the park or out to breakfast. I’d go to the pub, I’d meet up with friends, I’d watch movies, I‘d hang out with Moana. My life was the same as everybody else who had a little bit of money and lived in a developed country. It was repetitive and at times a little dull. However I was about to get all the excitement I could handle.
Moana became erratic and hard to understand and control. She would drink more than she could handle and take any pill that was put in her hand. I became confused and concerned.
24.
One night we were lying in bed and Moana told me something. It was something that would ruin the world for me forever. Never again would I look at something and enjoy it. I would laugh when it was the last resort. I would laugh because otherwise I would cry. And I do not like to cry. I would forever after this moment laugh only when I found the things around me ridiculous. And I would laugh a lot because I found most things ridiculous. Sports games were ridiculous, so were parliamentary committees and rockets to outer space, so were savings accounts, more than two pairs of shoes, new cars, expensive restaurants, designer clothing, mansions, private jets, footpath upgrades, big screen TV’s, rave parties, expensive haircuts, sunglasses, sunbathing at the beach, anti cancer campaigns, and nearly every damn person that talked to me or passed me in the street.
Moana told me her father had sex with her repeatedly when she was a child.
It started when she was three. And it continued throughout her childhood Her uncle also had a few turns.
Moana told me her parents were alcoholics that hardly ever fed her. She was always hungry. At school she would to eat the blades of grass because her stomach was so empty. She told me her father and his friends made her eat cigarettes for their entertainment. She told me her father once gave her an uncooked, unprepared eel between two pieces of old bread to eat. Then he beat her. All she had done was say she was hungry.
Moana was dead and fucked from the moment she was born.
I lay next to poor dear Moana thinking, fuck you all and fuck the way you think. I was right all along. I was right not to want to escape your world.
The people around had always told me I was wrong. They'd told me to be concerned with life as it was. To be concerned with jobs and assets. To be concerned with my future.
As far as I was concerned, if my involvement in life, if my involvement in the world as it currently runs today, if my involvement in this world even ever so slightly helps create a situation where this happens to another little girl, I would rather be dead.
I would cut my throat in the most violent way rather than contribute to a world that creates these situations. Bah! To your filthy ideas and your fucking simplicities. Burn the whole thing down, destroy it all, so we may begin again. So we can make all the same stupid fucking mistakes all over again. So we can build a world that doesn’t give a damn about the majority of citizens. Or we may be different, we may learn, and we may be better.
Look at our world. It’s saturated in poverty, civil wars, murder, rape, greed, theft and a hundred other terrible occurrences. There are many good things in this world but they do not cover the bad. So many times in our short history people have tried to stand up change what is going on. And they have done something. They have changed the lives of some people and it was a beautiful thing to watch. But one person can do nothing. No matter how charismatic and charming they are. Each time these people have changed something, something equally terrible has happened i9n return. No one saviour can change the world totally to a better way. It takes a whole world to give up and say, forget this, this is rubbish, I don’t want to be a part of this anymore, it’s just too damn difficult, this is unfair, there are just too many people on this earth, we are destroying it, this way of living can never survive, let’s just throw it all in, let’s get drunk, let’s play music and dance, let’s screw around and be nice to each other, let’s eat all the food, and then let’s sit back and watch it all collapse. At least we can have a bit of fun towards the end of our lives.
So that’s what I decided to do. I gave up. I was going to lead the way. I did not care anymore. If my civilisation created situations where grown men were so corrupted they raped their three year old daughters, then I didn’t want to be a part of my civilisation. I will be irresponsible, drunk, kind, and I will wait to die. No more, I thought, I want no more to be a part of this.
That night I lay there with tears in my eyes. Of course I did. Anyone with a heart would. Moana had told me previously that people were usually enthralled with her for two weeks before they were driven away by her insanities, by her unpredictability. I decided I was going nowhere. I would stay with her until she broke me. And break me she did.
25.
Soon after Moana’s friends couldn’t handle her anymore. She was losing her grip on sanity. She was drawing on the walls and breaking everything in their house. They moved to England. I was still seeing her as much as I could. With me she was at peace, with me she was with someone who cared about things other than themselves. I went with her to her ex-friend's house to pick up her things.
We arrived at the house. She packed everything up. There were two big bags, two small bags and a heavy wooden trunk. A lot of crap for a poor girl who slept on the floor. I suggested we call a taxi. She wouldn’t have a word of it. She got angry and asked me, “Why would we take a taxi when we can get there for free?”
By free she meant by tram, then train and then another tram. And a lot of walking. The bags were heavy and the trunk was very heavy. She was thin and undernourished. I was thin, strong and lazy. I’ve never had the energy to argue with people so I gave in.
Besides, Moana had never had much control over her life so I figured she could tell me what to do for a while. Maybe it would make her feel alright.
We dragged all her crap up to the tram stop. It was exhausting. We took the tram. We got off and dragged it all to the train station and waited for the train. We took the train to Flinders Street. We got off and carried the stuff to the tram stop. We looked like homeless people. The people watching us didn’t have clue. They didn’t give a damn. We were just an inconvenience to them, what with all our stuff taking up room on the tram.
We got off the tram and dragged her stuff back to my house. Earlier I'd told my flatmates Moana was staying for a while. My eyes told them not to ask questions. I’d already told them about a few of the problems I’d been having so they kept quiet.
26.
Over the next few weeks, I would get up to go to work and Moana would stay in bed. It made sense. If I’d been continuously raped by my Dad, I would want to stay in bed too. I’d stay in bed with a locked door and a gun next to me.
I tried to encourage her to work but she didn’t want to. She said people always looked at her, leered at her, assaulted her. I figured it was the truth.
27.
One night we went out for drinks. It was at the local bar. Moana looked beautiful. She’d been happy for a week or so and I’d never seen her look so good. I was in love again. Faith met us at the bar. I worked with Faith and she was another of the most appealing girls I knew. Curves and smiles and hair and eyes to match. They were quite a pair. I stood to the side enjoying myself.
We played pool and we drank. Faith and Moana kissed each other giggling. It looked good. I enjoyed myself. So did they. Then we went to another bar. We were drunk. There was a jazz band and the music was good. We bought some drinks and I sat in a dark corner. The girls were dancing. Then their dancing turned sexual. They rubbed and grinded. They kissed and danced. The whole bar watched. The band watched, the customers watched, the bar staff watched. Every so often one of the girls would dance over to me, sit on my lap, and kiss me on the mouth or cheek. I was the envy of the bar. The bar tenders bought them shots. The band finished. They girls were smashed, I was smashed, it was time to go.
I had a little BMX bike with me. We all three tried to ride it. At the same time. It was ridiculous, we looked like clowns. Me pedalling, Faith on the handle bars, Moana sitting on the back. We were the town fools. Eventually Faith got sick of it and walked back to my house. It wasn’t far. Maybe five minutes.
Moana and I screwed around with the bike. Something was bent or the chain was off. I fixed it. Moana sat on the handle bars as I rode along.
“Watch this,” said Moana as he began to raise herself on the handle bars as we rode along.
“Baby be careful,” I said.
“Let me do what I fucking want,” she said.
So I let her do what she fucking wanted.
She tried to stand on the handle bars. She fell off and fell flat on the grass side and passed out. She passed out from the booze and her insane depressing life. I put the bike down and tried to pick her up. Some kind, caring, comfortable citizens wound down the windows of their cars and asked, is everything all right.
“Everything’s fine,” I said, “leave us alone.”
Nothing was fine. I was in a big mess.
I eventually woke Moana up. She was still beautiful. My poor little baby, she never had a chance. We walked back to my house and she sat down in the alleyway outside. I tried to convince her to come inside but she wouldn’t listen, she was staying right there. She’d had too much to drink. I felt bad for a moment, thinking, maybe I shouldn’t have gone out with her, I was encouraging her to drink, it was my fault. But I knew, regardless of what I did, she would still go out and get smashed. She had the right to get out of her mind. I wanted out of my mind as well but I certainly wouldn’t trade my life with hers. It was better she was out with me then any of the other self absorbed, dangerous bastards out there.
I tried again to get her inside. She was passing out from the booze. So I picked her up. I carried her towards the doorway. She kicked her legs out. Her arms flew out. She wouldn’t let me carry her inside. She was screaming. It was distressing. Inside sitting and watching were my flatmates Russell and Arnold. There was also another guy I didn’t like, Duke. Faith was there too. They were confused. So was I. Moana was screaming.
I snapped.
“Look!” I screamed, “If you don’t want to come inside, stay the fuck outside!”
I put her down, walked to the kitchen, poured a big scotch, drank it back and lit a cigarette. I was shaking and losing my self control. We lived in a crazy world and no one seemed to see it but me. Moana came inside. Of course she did. It’s what people do. You’re nice to them, they hate you. You tell them to get lost, they come running back to be found.
I sat on the couch in a bitter mood talking to the boys. I hated everyone and everything at that moment. I looked over at Faith. She smiled at me. She had her problems too but she usually kept it together. Moana was sitting on Faith kissing her. The two girls were sitting across the room from us. Us boys were sitting four in a row. I wished Duke would leave, I couldn’t stand the sight of him. Moana was kissing Faith. She started lifting up her top. Eventually she had her top off then she had her bra off. Faith sat there with her beautiful tits out. She had great breasts, the best I’ve seen. And fortunately or unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot. The other boys started to feel uncomfortable. They began to disperse. One went to the kitchen, one outside, the other upstairs. Me, I didn’t give a damn. I sat there and watched. These two girls can do whatever they please. I’m just watching, I’m always just been watching, I’m not moving for anyone.
Moana grabbed Faith by the hand and let her upstairs. She grabbed my hand and tried to drag me up too. I let go of her hand. I poured another scotch and followed them upstairs. My flatmate passed me a video camera. It was creepy and disgusting but I took it anyway. I opened my door, went into my room and threw the video camera in the closet. Faith and Moana were on the bed. Faith was still topless. I stood there. Moana told me to kiss Faith. I thought, why the hell not, I’m so damn confused I’ll just about do anything. I leaned over Faith and she kissed me. It felt good. Moana got up and left. I figured she was going to the toilet. Or to kill herself. At that moment I didn’t care. I was tired. I was so very, very tired. Faith kissed me again and I kissed her back.
I went looking for Moana. She was passed out cold on a chair. She wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t move, I was too weak to pick her up. I went back to my bedroom. I lay down with Faith. She smiled at me. I smiled back. I lay next to of her. We were kissing and groping each other. She was enjoying it, I was enjoying it. We’d wanted each other for a while and it was good to fool around. That was as far as it went. Faith had a boyfriend and I had Moana. We were a couple of confused kids in a confusing world. Whilst we lay with each other it was all ok.
Faith left. I looked for Moana. She was unconscious on my friend’s bed. Nothing would have woken her up. She was passed out to the world that had treated her so badly and I was glad for her. She was my hero, always had been, always will be. If what happened to her had happened to me, I would’ve killed myself years ago. I picked up my poor sleeping child that had never been a child and carried her back to my bed. I sat there, looking at her, stroking her face, stroking her hair, thinking, what a pity, what a goddamned pity.
28.
The next day I went back to work. I was always going to work. Everyone was always going to work. It seems as if our lives revolve around work. Work to get food, work to get accommodation, work to buy clothes, work to buy that bedside table that you’ve so desperately always wanted and needed. We work to buy things. We buy things we feel better. We think we’ve found the answer, we feel ok. Everything is good, everything is different. And then we become unhappy again and we don’t know what happened.
So we change jobs, we leave a relationship or enter one, or maybe we buy a new model car. And for a short while we feel better. We feel good. Everything has changed. Then we feel bad again. What the hell is going on!? Aren’t I meant to be happy? Isn’t that the point of being alive, isn’t that what I’m striving for? It’s not working. We’re happy then we’re unhappy and we can never pin point the exact thing that is making us happy.
Some people decide it’s exercise they need. So they run, walk, or swim. Or kick, hit, or throw some ball all over the place. They feel good after the exercise, they think, this is it! I’ve the solution! Then at night they wake up worrying about their bills, whether the people at work like them, they worry about the fat they haven’t quite lost. They feel unhappy again. What happened? I thought the exercise was working. It does work, they think, I must exercise more.
Other people decide that it’s a good diet that makes you happy. They eat carrots and apples and fish and never fried foods or cholesterol, or whatever it is that you’re not meant to eat. They drink one glass of red wine a night instead of eight. They start to feel good, they think, this is it! I found it. I’ve found happiness, I was such a fool. If I’d only known all these years.
Then they watch the news at night and see the starving children and bombed children, the molested children, the child prostitutes, the child gang members, the child glue sniffers, the child army soldiers and the homeless children, and they think what the fuck is going on? And they are unhappy again. Their wonderful diet and healthy insides aren’t helping anymore. They're affected by some force outside of their control. They're unhappy even though they eat well, they exercise well, their spouse loves them, and they have three beautiful children. They have a house that’s paid for, two nice cars, a swimming pool and an overseas holiday planned for later in the year. And they’re depressed. They ask themselves, how the hell do I get rid of this depression?
You can’t. There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with you’re diet or exercise levels. You live too long and there’s too much on your mind, too much for you to see, feel and deal with. The underlying misery of the world is affecting you.
Even if you don’t think it does, even if you don’t think about it, it is. You may be in the best mood you’ve ever been in but when you walk past a desperate hungry drunk lying filthy in the street, your mood will falter. You can’t help it. You have a heart, you have compassion. There is nothing wrong with you, there is not a chemical imbalance in your brain. Nobody can ever be happy unless they completely switch themselves off from the outside world. If you ignore everything and live in your own mind away from all the filth, destruction, disease and desperation of our civilisations, then you have a chance at happiness. Otherwise, you’re fucked till you die. You’ll never be truly happy. Only when you’re drunk and screwing the skin off some woman or man you’re attracted to will you be able to ignore everything. Then life is glorious.
29.
Anyway, I was going back to work. I could never concentrate. I was always thinking about Moana. How was I going to help her? She wouldn’t get a job. She wouldn’t see doctors. She’d seen so many doctors in her life she hated them. She’d been in and out of mental hospitals for years. In the future I was going to have to choose my girlfriends better.
I was thinking about how to get rid of her. I didn’t want to get rid of her, I needed her gone. I had always been affected by the miseries of others. And now I had a one of the saddest human disasters I’d ever seen sleeping in my bed. It was killing me. My drinking was bad. It had always been bad but now it was worse. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t enjoy anything. I couldn’t even enjoy the beautiful girls at my work. Their smiles looked like sneers and there bodies looked like traps. I was in trouble.
30.
I convinced Moana to move out. I had her move in with her Mum. She didn’t like living with her Mum. I didn’t blame her. I had to do this. No man can ever help another person unless they look after themselves first. If you’re not stable you cannot help stabilise another person. You will both fall over.
So Moana moved out. I told her I couldn’t be her boyfriend anymore but I would always be her friend. She didn’t understand. I knew how she felt. I went back to New Zealand for a week. I was a jet setting high flyer and Moana was a incest victim. The world was in turmoil, nothing made any sense.
31.
I went to New Zealand. I guess you could say it was good. It was good but it was annoying. Everyone asked me what I was doing, what I wanted to do with my life. I said I worked in a bar and that I didn’t know what I was doing with my life. They looked concerned. They furrowed their foreheads and worried about me. They had no idea. Their concerns didn’t concern me, they were worried and I didn’t care.
I flew back to Melbourne. I went back to work. I worried about Moana but I tried to forget about her. It’s easy to ignore things when they’re not in you face. Take war and famine in third world countries. You probably only think about it for a few seconds a day. And then it’s back to the new hilarious sitcom on TV. It’s all a bit stupid isn’t it?
32.
I called Moana shortly after returning to Melbourne. She sounded so happy to hear my voice. I said I’d come over. She lived on the other side of town. Two trains and a 30 minute walk. About an hour total. I called her later saying I was running a little late. She didn’t sound as good as the last phone call so I left straight away. After an hour I arrived at her mum’s house. The door was open. I knocked. No one answered. I called out. No one replied. I walked in. Moana was in the front room. She lay on the bed. A fan was blowing. Moana’s was writhing and rolling on the bed. She was in pain.
“What's wrong?” I asked.
“My stomach hurts, she said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don't know,” she said.
There was a bucket next to her bed with a small layer of bile in it. I was afraid.
I walked into the kitchen to get a cold wet cloth. There was a fat beast of a woman lying on the couch.
“Hi, I’m Willem,” I said, “I’m Moana’s friend, she's sick, do you know what’s wrong, is she ok?”
The disgusting beast didn’t even look at me, she just said, “That girl’s always complaining, she’ll be alright, she’s a nuisance.”
I wanted to run at her and kick her in the side of the face. I wanted to scream, “There’s a girl in there who’s sick and you don’t even care! She lives in your house and you’d rather lie on the couch! You ugly fat fucking whore what the hell is wrong with you!?”
Instead I walked over to the sink and wet a cloth. I brought it back to Moana. I wiped her face and her neck and she smiled a meek smile. I didn’t know what to do.
I ran down to the corner shop and bought a lemonade ice block. It’s seems like a stupid thing to have done , but it looked like she needed sugar and it had worked for me in the past. In the back of my mind I knew she was worse off than I had ever been.
I brought the silly ice block back to Moana. She took a few sucks, threw up and threw the ice block on the floor. I lay next to her and held her. I’m so useless I thought, what the hell is wrong with me, why did I leave this girl behind? Moana started shaking.
I called her mother. She told me to take Moana to the hospital. She seemed calm but slightly concerned. Me, I was frantic. I called a taxi. I paced around the room, looking at Moana, looking away, thinking, what is this, why is this happening, why does this ever happen?
The taxi arrived. The taxi driver knocked. I picked up Moana. I took her to the van. I told the driver to take us to the hospital. The driver was concerned for his upholstery. I had Moana stick her head out the window. It seemed to do her good. Not much good but a very small amount. We arrived at the hospital. It seemed to take an hour but it was only a couple of minutes. I threw the driver some money.
“It’s too much,” he said.
“Does it look like I fucking care?” I yelled.
I carried Moana inside. I walked up to the desk. The hospital staff looked bored.
“Overdose?”
“No,” I said.
I sat down with Moana in my lap. A stretcher arrived and they took her inside. “What's wrong?” they asked,
“I have no idea.” I said, “Just please, please help her.”
“We’ll do our best,” they said.
I went back to the waiting room and waited for them do their best.
I sat in the waiting room. My legs were shaking. It was sunny outside. An old man sat down next to me.
“Nice day isn’t it,” said the old man.
“Yes.” I said, “It’s a very nice day.”
I changed seats. The hospital staff came and took me to see Moana. She was asleep. My little broken angel looked peaceful. I hoped she would stay that way forever. I hoped she would die. Life wasn’t good for her. The hospital staff said she hadn’t eaten for a number of days. It made sense. They asked me about the cuts on her arms. I said there were no new ones. Cutting yourself made as much sense as your dad fucking you. I never thought twice about the cuts.
Moana’s mum arrived. She looked concerned but not too bad. I was pale and shaking. I guess things affect people differently. Moana was awake and she was smiling. She held my hand. She said she loved me, that I was the best boyfriend she’d ever had. She’d forgotten I had broken things off with her. She broke my heart each time she looked at me. I looked away.
We took Moana back to her mothers house. Her mother gave us some food. Moana took a few bites and left most of the plate untouched. I tried to encourage her to eat but she said no. She was the most stubborn person I’d ever known. She had nothing left, her dignity was gone, her life was gone, all she had was her ability to choose what she did and didn’t do. I thought that was fair. I let her be.
I brought her some strawberries. She ate a couple and said she didn’t like them. She leaned up against me. Her mother came in and asked if she’d like a little bong. I’ll repeat that.
Her mother came in and asked if she’d like a little bong.
I couldn’t move. I looked at Moana, I looked at her mother, I looked back at Moana, I looked back at her mother. The world had ended for me. This was the ultimate in human stupidity. The world was over, it was done for, I couldn’t handle it for one more moment.
“I have to go,” I said.
“But I want you to stay with me,” Moana said.
“I can’t.”
She looked at me with 21 years of terror and fright in her eyes. I turned away. I kissed her on the cheek. She grabbed at me. I walked away. I walked away because I had to. I could never help this girl. I could never help anyone. I was ruined, all my faith in humanity was gone, all my faith in myself was gone. I had to do something drastic or I was going to kill myself. I walked home with tears in my eyes.
33.
The next day I decided to go away. I walked to the library. I opened an atlas. I looked for a country I could afford to go to, a country far away from all the people I knew and all the languages and cultures I knew. I wanted nothing to do with anyone. I didn’t understand anyone and they sure as hell didn’t have a chance at understanding me. I chose Chile. I’d never known anyone to go to Chile. I’m sure people have gone there before, but none that I knew.
I went home and got my money from the bottom of my laundry basket. I had two thousand five hundred dollars. I walked to the travel agent. I walked in and sat down. The man looked at me.
“I’d like a one way ticket to Chile please,” I said.
“Are you sure?” asked the man.
“Yes,” I said.
“Ok,” he said, “the only ticket we have is in two months time, leaving 15 July for two thousand dollars.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, “It’s quite expensive, you could probably get it cheaper by searching around a bit.”
He wasn’t very good at his job.
“I don’t care,” I said
“You don’t care?”
“No. I. Do. Not. Care.”
“Ok.”
He screwed around for a while. I gave him the two thousand dollars in cash. He gave me the ticket. I felt relieved. I went home and had a celebratory cigarette, a scotch and about ten beers.
34.
I went to work the next day. My manager was another one of the most beautiful women in the world. Her body is amazing, her face stunning and her eyes and mind the best I’ve ever seen. I told her I was going away in two months, that I need to work a lot and make some money. She saw my eyes and she said yes. I loved her, I still love her. So I began working all the time. I worked 60, 70 hours a week. I was there all the time. I’d get home, think about Moana and get drunk. I’d go to work again the next day. Customers would come up to me.
“You work all the time,” they would state.
“Yes I do.”
“Aren’t you tired?”
“Yes, I am tired”
My body was tired, my mind was tired, my soul was tired and most of all I was tired of every single person that walked in front of my eyes.
35.
Faith and I started seeing more of each other. She knew I was going away, I knew I was going away. This gave us a license to fuck as much as we wanted. And we did. She threw her self into it, determined to make me enjoy it and determined to have a good time herself to. She was a beautiful girl with her own problems, and I loved being with her. I slept with other girls too. It was mean to do this to Faith but I couldn’t help myself. When I saw an opportunity with a girl I went for it. Being drunk and rolling around in bed with girls was the only thing that made me feel good. It was the only thing that kept me alive.
36.
I met another of the most beautiful girls of my life just before I left Melbourne. She was tall and slim with curly dark hair. She had eyes that nearly knocked me down. She came to work at the bar. Her name was Vali. Short for Valerie. We talked a bit at work but not too much. One day she wrote me a story on small pieces of yellow paper stapled together. I knew she was sweet. I knew she had a heart. I knew I could love her. I still have that story.
37.
One night I invited Vali for a drink after work. We went for a drink. We talked like I haven’t talked for a long time. She talked like she hadn’t talked for a long time. We both knew the same things. We both understood. We left the bar quite drunk. We stood on the street corner and kissed lightly. We went our separate ways. Half way home I wanted to turn around, dash back to her, grab her and carry her back to mine. I wanted to have her for ever. But I didn’t. I went home, lay in bed. I thought about her and I thought about Moana.
38.
I went to visit Moana frequently. She would sit in her pyjamas out back of her house looking away, looking sad. It depressed me so much to see her like that. She was getting worse. I hated myself so much for leaving her each night. I hated myself for leaving the country. I hated myself and I hated everyone else. There was just so much pain in the world.
One day I surprised Moana. It was her birthday. It was about three weeks before I left the country. I arrived at her house and she threw her arms around me with the biggest smile. I was happy. We went out back and smoked cigarettes. I asked her to close her eyes. I pulled out a mini chocolate cake, stuck a candle in it and sung her happy birthday. Half way through singing she asked if she could open her eyes. I said, of course you can open your eyes stupid. She opened her eyes and I continued singing. She smiled and cried. I felt good. I was good. I was a very good human being and so was she. We were both happy, it was beautiful and wouldn’t last.
39.
I saw Vali a few more times. We went to a bar in Prahran and got drunk. We spent our time laughing at everyone around us. She made me laugh, I made her laugh. When we left she asked if she could stay at my house. I said I had no objection to that. We took my bike. We were drunk. She sat on the handle bars and I rode. We dodged the people and almost hurt ourselves many times. She was laughing and screaming and insulting the pedestrians. I thought, this is my type of girl. We got home and ripped the clothes of each other and lay down, searching and clawing, sucking and licking, slamming all of our concerns into each other and away.
40.
I was still sleeping with Faith. I was a scum bag. A sack of shit. I pretended to care about Moana and I was hurting to other girls as well. Both Faith and Val worked at Stop and I was sleeping with them. I wasn’t a stud, I was a stupid inconsiderate bastard. I should’ve been shot. The nights at work became uncomfortable. Nobody talked about it, but you could feel it, everybody knew. I couldn’t wait to leave. I’d made a mess of life and I couldn’t wait to escape. I wanted to escape life, I wanted to die. But I’d never been able to kill myself. So going to a country where I knew no one and didn’t know the language was a pretty good option.
41.
It was two days before I left for Chile. I went and saw Moana. I met her at a café in North Melbourne. She’d moved into a council flat on her own. She didn’t look good anymore. She didn’t look like a model. I was depressed. If God had walked up to me at that very moment, handed me a gun and said,
“If you shoot yourself right now, I will make her life perfect. I will erase her memory and I’ll give her a nice childhood. I’ll give her lot’s of honest friends and a successful career as a model. I’ll give her a boyfriend that loves her and parents that care for her. I'll make her happy.”
If he'd done that, I would’ve done it. I would’ve snatched that gun from him and screamed,
“You’re a fucking bastard for what you let happen to her,” and put the gun to my head and a bullet between my eyes.
And there was Moana, smiling, big glasses on, talking away, becoming more and more insane.
42.
I left two days later. My flight was from Melbourne to Auckland to Santiago. I flew from Melbourne to Auckland. I sat in the departure lounge in Auckland, the place of my birth. All that separated me from all the people and places I had known as a child were a few glass walls and a horde of security guards. And my own desire never to see anybody ever again.
I boarded the plane wondering where everyone was going. Why were they going to Chile? Did they all think like I did, were they all running away, were they all frightened out of their minds? Were they all lost and scared and didn’t know what the hell to do? That much I knew, that they were all frightened and scared. They may not admit it or even think it, but it was there. It was there deep down in their intestines or in their spinal fluid. They were as scared and confused as I was.
Again, the world seemed so stupid. If we weren’t getting on planes, we were getting on boats. Or we were getting on trams or buses. We were getting on bicycles or into cars. We were moving around, always moving around. We could never stay still. Because if we sat still, by ourselves with only the walls to stare at, we would all lose our minds. Worse would be to sit and look at the sky for too long. If you sit and stare at the sky, at space, at the stars, for too long, you begin to realise just how meaningless everything we do is. You begin realise just how insignificant you are. When your life has no purpose, when you realise you can affect nothing, you become very afraid and very alone.
I sat on the plane. The waitresses brought me food and drinks and smiles. I watched movies. Occasionally I got up and went to the toilet. I sat down again and ordered more drinks. I read a book. I never wanted to get off the plane. For me this was heaven. This was perfect. The only thing I could do was eat, drink, sit and go to the toilet. It was all I was capable of and it was all I wanted to do. I wanted the plane to crash. I was so happy. My life had come to it’s peak.
43.
I arrived in Santiago de Chile. I didn’t know what I was doing there. I knew why. But I didn’t know what. I hadn’t made any plans. The stupidity of my actions hit me.
I walked towards passport control. I gave the unhappy man my passport. He took it, hardly looked at it, stamped it and gave it back to me. He saw thousands of people each day, he didn’t give a damn about me. He had his wife and his kids and his bills to worry about it. I think he looked at me for about one second. That was enough for him. That was enough for me.
I went in search of my luggage. I picked up my bags and went outside. There was a throng of about 80 taxi drivers vying for the attention of the stupid rich gringos. I tried not to look stupid, rich or white. It didn’t work. They grabbed at me and yelled at me. They had to do it. There were kids to be fed, bills to be paid. It was the same all over the world.
I got through the throng. I looked up and their was a bus that said Aero Centro. I took it to mean Airport Bus to the City. I hoped I was right. I got on. There was a sign that had prices on it. I couldn’t read the sign but I could read the numbers. I gave the driver one of the notes in my pocket that had the same numbers as the sign. He gave me a ticket. I had made it. It was going to be ok.
A young man watched me. He watched me and I knew he would rob me when I got off the bus. I sat far behind him and I watched him. I pulled my cap down low and kept an eye on him. I hid my money in my socks. I had only been in Chile for half an hour and I was already going to be robbed. I sat on the bus. I looked out the window. I watched the filth and the poverty go by. There were dilapidated buildings and dilapidated people everywhere. I was in Santiago. I could have been anywhere. The young man got of the bus and I was relieved.
44.
The bus arrived in central Santiago. The city looked hostile. I put my bag on my shoulder and walked around the city centre for two hours. I was lost and scared. I was away from everyone and everything I knew and it felt good. But not as good as I expected. I felt like everyone wanted to kill me. I turned a corner and I was saved. There was a sign that said La Casa Blanco. The White House. It was a cheap hostel. I went inside and it was run by Australians. I was amazed.
45.
I paid for a week and put my bag in my room. I put my expensive things in the locker. Which were nothing. So a put a pillow case and a pair of socks in there. They were important. I had a lock and I wanted to use it. I had shower. I put my clothes back on. I went for a walk.
Outside it was about midday. It was the same inside. I walked down the street. There was a shell petrol station across the street. It seemed to me to be a very good business to be in. Everyone liked cars and everyone liked destroying the planet. You were always in business. The shell station sat there slowly contaminating the land that it sat on.
I walked around the corner and happened upon a street with cafes, footpaths, cars, people and the occasional tree. It was a normal street, a street you could find anywhere in the world. Apart from the dogs. There were dogs everywhere. Dogs without owners. Dogs that had the potential to get together and pick on lone people. People like me. I kept an eye on them.
I sat down on a bench in the sun. It was warm. A white man walked past. He looked at me and I looked at him. We could both see we were lost. I looked at him in a way that said, ‘it’s ok for you to come over.’ He came over. He asked me if I knew where he could buy cigarettes? I had no idea. I offered him one of mine. I sat on the bench smoking a cigarette in the sun in Santiago talking to a stranger. 15 hours ago I had been in Melbourne. It was all very strange.
“My name’s Andrew,” he said.
“My name’s Willem.”
Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too.
He asked where I was from. I told him Auckland. I asked him the same. He said Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia. He gave me all that information. It was helpful. He asked me what I was doing there? I said running away. I asked him the same question. He said he was running away too. We became friends.
We walked up the street, stopped off a café and ordered coffee. Our drinks arrived and they weren't what we thought we’d ordered. Neither of us spoke Spanish. In a way, it was stupid that we where there. In a way it was beautiful.
We talked. In Australia Andrew had lived in his car in the bush. He’d play his guitar to the birds and animals and to himself, he’d cook some food, then he’d go to sleep. He said none of his family understood what he was doing. I thought it sounded like a great life. He said he had social problems, a string of ex girlfriends, and he didn’t know what was going on in his life. I liked him more and more. He was about 40 years old.
If life expectancies were still low, Andrew would've been dying or dead at his age. And he would have lived a full and sometimes enjoyable life. It’s these lives of a hundred years that cause so much difficulty. With all that old age to plan for and worry about, it’s difficult to enjoy your young age. I guess you could enjoy your young age and then hope for cancer or a plane crash. If you don’t eat for four weeks, you can die of starvation. If you have the patience and you’re isolated from everyone, you can die anytime you want.
We decided to continue walking. We walked around and all over Santiago for hours. The dogs kept an eye on us. I kept an eye on the dogs. They followed us. Every so often I would turn around and intimidate them. And they’d back off. But they’d be back soon enough. Like the taxi drivers, they smelt and hunted stupid rich gringos. They knew they were stronger and smarter than me.
We climbed the Cerro Santa Lucia. A big hill. It looked like a volcano. It had steps and nice pathways and was covered in vegetation. On the top was a statue of the virgin Mary. The thing was at least 60 metres high. And perfectly white. We sat on the steps and looked at the city. Santiago is a heavily populated city, with some 16 million people. The city spreads further than you can see. The snow capped Andes mountains surround the city. The pollution lays over the top of the city like a dirty, suffocating fog. It is hard to see and hard to breathe. At the end of the day you blow black snot from your nose.
46.
We went back to the hostel and bought red wine. It cost almost nothing. About two Australian or NZ dollars a bottle. I bought 4. Then we drank. Andrew played his guitar. Then all the other people came along. People that wouldn’t talk to us before but now there was a guitar and wine on the table we had friends. People became interested in us and interested in our wine and guitar. I had to answer all the same questions. Where are you from, where have you been, where are you going, how long, name, past, future, religion. These leeches wouldn’t leave us alone. They drained all of my will to live, they drank all our wine. I went to bed.
I was in a bedroom with 8 other beds. All night people came in and went out. They farted, burped, sneezed, snored, scratched and screamed all through the night. When you sleep in a room with seven other people you quickly discover just how puerile people are. Everyone of the nasty natural bodily functions they cover up during the day come bursting out at night to ruin your sleep. You see them for what they are.
47.
I woke in the morning angry. I showered in the bathroom with ten other people. I could hear their showers, their scrubbing, their fondling. They talked to each other over the tops of the dividers. I never talked to anyone while showering or urinating. It made me feel vulnerable. I needed a door with a lock. Be it a bathroom, a bedroom or a house.
48.
Daily life continued in Santiago. It was about the same as everywhere else. I’d wake up, shower, eat, shit, fill my day with something, come home, eat, wait a while, go to bed again. It didn’t seem much different. Except I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t speak the language, I slept in a room with eight other people and showered with ten. I wasn’t sure if I was better off here or somewhere else. I figured I was just getting through the days until I died. I thought I was doing quite a good job of it.
49.
I explored the city each day. I’d take the subway train somewhere, get off, walk around, get lost, get scared, sit down, think about my predicament, get up again, walk some more, get very lost and very scared, turn around and walk somewhere else. Sometimes I’d sit on the curb and write an apology note to my family.
‘Dear Family, I’m sorry for being such a fool.’ Then I’d get up and walk some more, and just as the sun was about to set I’d always find a subway station. The days were exciting.
The first time I used the subway I destroyed the whole system. All I had to do is walk up to the ticket counter, throw the attendant some money, he'd give me my change and a ticket and off I could go. There was always a big queue and it always ran smoothly. Throw cash, get change and ticket, go.
I walked up to the cashiers window and gave him my money. As he gave me my change and ticket, I said uno. I wanted him to know that it was only me. One. I'd ruined everything. He asked me a question in return. I stood very still. No intiendo, I said. He kept talking. People behind me were getting irritated, the line was backing up, there was grumbling. I was sweating. I didn’t know what to do. I turned around and walked very fast towards the exit. I didn’t look behind. I was the most hated man in Santiago. I walked fast towards home, opened my door and threw myself on the bed. That was enough excitement for the day.
50.
I planned on staying in Santiago for a long time. I took Spanish lessons but soon tired of them. I grew bored of learning phrases that I quickly forgot, so I quit. The lessons were dull and too expensive.
I had nothing to do. Which I liked. I lay around reading all day. People would say, all you do is lay around reading. I would ignore them, take a sip from my wine, and continue reading. I’d since learnt how to use the subway properly so when I wasn’t laying around reading, I was walking around or zooming around on the underground train.
Soon I asked for a job in the hostel. I had some money but it would run out soon enough. And then I’d be stuck. I didn’t have a ticket out of the country. I needed the job to keep me where I was, to keep me away from everyone and away from all their expectations. Over here all people expected of me was to walk the city or lie around reading and drink wine. I liked it here.
I began working for the hostel. I moved into the staff quarters. We slept in an abandoned mansion next door to the hostel. The window panes in my room had insulation instead of glass. I lived in my room with another man and in the mansion were perhaps ten of us. There were holes in the floor and the bathroom was a good 200 metres from our bedroom. We would freeze in there. I had two cheap blankets and I went to bed each night with two layers of clothing on. Two tee shirts, two hooded sweatshirts, a beanie and two pairs of socks. I would wake in the middle of the night freezing and shivering. I'd rub myself to try and find warmth then sleep again. It was difficult.
51.
Young Australians, New Zealanders and western Europeans would stay in the hostel and go on day or week trips to beautiful landmarks. We would clean their rooms, answer their questions at the front desk and freeze at night.
They kept coming through. Each day some would arrive and some would leave. I know this is the purpose of a hostel but when you watch it each day, the churning over of the beds, the dishes and the faceless people, everything begins to lose it’s meaning. It seems so pointless, this arriving, unpacking, walking around, sitting on buses with people from your own country, getting out and saying things like, ‘it’s beautiful,’ and, ‘it’s amazing.’ Taking a photograph or 20, smiling, getting back on the bus, talking about your own country to the people from your own country, driving back to the hostel, eating, drinking cheap wine, going to sleep, waking up in the morning, repeating the day before, same trip, same conversations, different natural land mark, going back to the hotel eating, talking, drinking cheap wine, going to bed and then doing the same thing again tomorrow. Some days they’d do nothing, just rest and read. This is when I liked them most. And then their holiday with us would be over.
They’d pack their bags, return the keys to us, go to the airport, fly to another country and do it all again. Or they’d fly home, drive to their house, unpack, eat, drink wine, talk and go to bed. The next day they’d go back to work and tell their workmates about their wonderful holiday. They'd tell them about how exciting it all was. About how alive they felt. And their workmates would say things like, ‘Oh you’re so adventurous,’ or, ‘I wish I could do that but I’ve got the mortgage payments, you know.’
When these people left us, once they’d returned to their lives, we would clean their rooms, remake their beds, and give the keys to some newly arrived people and they would do the same thing all over again. And we, the staff, would eat, talk, drink cheap wine, go to bed and freeze. The days passed by.
52.
I enjoyed myself.
Sure, half the time I was pissed off and miserable, but that was when I was working or answering every stupid obvious question posed to me. When I wasn’t working I was walking. Walking every corner of the grotesquely large and polluted Santiago de Chile. Each day I’d explore a new area, looking, searching, just happy to see new things. I would eat food in the cheapest places and sit on park benches looking at everyone as they passed by.
I stood out. I was different. I didn’t look like the locals and I didn’t do what most travellers did. I’m 6ft with sharp features. Most of the Chileans were 5ft, round faced and round bodied. I became the centre of attention. Everywhere I walked people would look at me. Some with contempt, some with interest and some with unbridled joy. When they smiled, I smiled back. When they scowled at me I looked away. You should always do your best to avoid confrontation when alone in a country where you don’t speak the language.
54.
I’d walk. Up mountains, through parks, down back alleys and into strange stores. I was a wandering idiot. And I was happy for it. I was glad to be nowhere near the other travellers, with their prescribed fun, their organised enjoyment.
I couldn’t understand how they could do that to themselves. They had saved so much money in jobs that they maybe disliked, they'd bought an expensive ticket to an alien country and gone on organised tours. It seemed so boring to me, so dull, such a waste of time. I guess they had no imagination, I guess they were scared.
I suppose it is nice to look at natural wonders. It is. It’s amazing to stand in front of a salt lake, or to stare at a huge waterfall, to gaze into a deep cavern. But it’s best to discover these things on your own, to search for them, to get lost along the way, to not know what the hell is going on, and to finally stumble upon these incredible sights and be blown away by them. To have your effort rewarded. If you go on an organised tour you might as well buy an expensive book of photographs, stay at home in awe, take photographs of the pages, and save yourself a lot of money. At least then you won’t have to put up with plane rides and bus rides and the dull conversation of people you don’t want to talk to.
It’s all an escape from mundane reality. You’re stuck in your job, you have house payments and car payments, fridge payments and savings. You have a good job that is leading to a better job that will all eventually lead to a house paid for and a comfortable, safe retirement. Then death. This gets depressing.
Each morning you get up, then shower, eat, drive or walk or whatever, get to your job, sit down or stand up, type, or lift, or talk, or press buttons on a machine large or small. Then you have lunch, continue doing what you were doing before lunch, stop what you’re doing, drive or walk home, talk to someone if there is anyone there, eat alone or with other people, watch TV or read or don’t, have sex if somebody wants to, otherwise masturbate, or don’t, go to bed, lie there for a while thinking about life or work tomorrow or why you are in bed alone or the bills you haven’t paid or the friend you had who is dead now, then eventually get tired and fall asleep.
So a holiday to a strange country, to go see something you haven’t seen before, doesn’t seem like a bad idea. It’s sounds like a damn good idea. It’ll be an escape from the repetitiveness of everyday life, you’ll come back and be able to cope with it. Cope with a life that you are not entirely sure is what it is meant to be. A life that seems a little surreal and at times pointless. We need our escapes. In organised holidays or drunken stupors at home. If we didn’t get a break now and again the whole world would be mad. If it isn’t already.
55.
Eventually I got sick of the hostel. I was bored of walking around and laying about. I decided to fly to the desert, to a place called Arica in the far north of Chile. I organised a house to stay in for a month. I was leaving in a week.
Two days before the desert flight I was sitting on the couch, reading and drinking wine. I had a set routine. A girl walked up to me. I had talked to her a few times before. Her name was Anna. She was short, a ‘tomboy’, liked to snowboard, a nice smile, she doubted her self and she was good to be around. She sat down next to me.
“What are you doing?” she asked
“Reading a book.”
‘Is it good?”
“Yes it is.”
A lot of conversation really is worthless. She got to the point..
“Would you like to come for a drive?” she asked.
“Yes, I would. Where are we going?”
“Why not Valparaiso?”
“Exactly. Why not Valparaiso?”
“We’ll sleep in the car,” she said.
“That’s a good idea.”
We stole blankets and pillows from the hostel. I purchased some beers and we left. She was driving. I was drinking. It was a good arrangement. We drove and talked. She was easy to talk to. She laughed when I said things and I laughed when she said things. We weren’t uncomfortable. If it was silent, it was silent, if we talked, we talked. We stopped on the side of the road a couple of times to release the beer from us. It went it, it came out. A lot happened in there but it seemed simple to me.
56.
We arrived in Valparaiso. The city was on the coast and about two hours from Santiago. We drove through the city marvelling at the buildings and the people. I was childish, laughing and giggling, bouncing around in my seat. The beer and the new sights were doing their thing. We stopped downtown. We got out and took photos of monuments. She took photos. I never took photos. I hardly ever had them developed and when I did they were terrible. I have my memory anyway and it’s all I need. The sole purpose of travel photography is showing off.
We drove around for a while. I wanted to go to the coast. We made it to the coast. It was a dark night and the sea was rough. The waves smashed into the rocks. But the rocks were stronger and stayed together. We walked onto the rocks. The wind rushed around us and the sea sprayed our faces. I stood there grinning as I marvelled at the power of the sea and the beauty of life.
We went back to the car and drove further down the coast. We came to a beach, so we parked and went for walk. We came to the end of beach and walked on the rocks there. I jumped from one rock to another and slipped. I had a beer bottle in my hand and landed on it. I lay there for a while thinking. Anna came up to me.
‘Are you alright?’ she asked
‘I think so. I’m just thinking.’
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Whether or not I’m alright.’
‘I don’t think you’re all right’, she said, ‘you’re bleeding badly’.
I looked at my hand. I was bleeding badly.
‘It’s alright, it’s just a little cut. It’ll stop bleeding soon.’
It wasn’t a little cut. It wasn’t going to stop bleeding soon.
‘I think we should take you to a hospital.’
‘I think that‘s a good idea.’
We started walking. There was a lot of blood. I had a red hand and a red arm. It looked like paint. I wished it was paint. We were walking towards the car. I was walking fast. We saw a hut and in it was a security guard. I showed him my hand and he showed me a sink and a medical kit. Anna washed and wrapped my hand. There was a big pool of blood on the ground.
We left and found the car. We got in and Anna started driving fast. I started drinking liquor from the bottle. It was a bad idea. I was killing the pain but thinning my blood. Anna raced around. She was a dangerous driver and I was a passenger in danger. I started to feel faint.
We raced around Valparaiso. Anna asked people were the hospital was. She spoke Spanish. I looked across at her and smiled. I was in love with her. She smiled back. We found a hospital but the hospital staff said they couldn’t help us, they were too full. They told us to chase another ambulance that was just leaving.
So there I was. In Valparaiso, chasing an ambulance, blood all over my hands, face and trousers, in love with a girl I’d known for a few hours, wondering if I was going to die. Life had become pretty exciting all of a sudden. I sat back and smiled.
We arrived at the second hospital and walked inside. The doctors took one look at me and led me inside. I was swaying. I’d lost a lot of blood and drunk a lot of liquor. The doctor didn’t like me. He had disgust in his eyes. And a little hate. I understood. I would’ve felt the same way about me.
The doctor lay me down and pumped two anaesthetic shots into my hand. He told me to look away. I didn't. I watched as he cleaned my hand. There were flaps of skin everywhere. It was grotesque. It didn’t look like my hand. It wasn’t my hand. In my drunken state of shock I thought I was at a medical school observing someone else’s hand being operated on.
The doctor finished cleaning the wound. He picked up what looked like a fish hook, with line and everything, and dug it in. I felt no pain. He dug in, out, baiting his hook with my hand. He jabbed and twisted and pulled. I saw a cockroach walk casually by. The doctor dug in and out of my hand in three places. I counted 15 stitches. It was heroic effort I was proud of him. He did a final clean up job, wrapped my hand in a bandage and told me to go. I said thank you doctor and he nodded whilst shaking his head.
Anna was sitting in the waiting room. She was surrounded by three drunk Chileans. I walked up to her. I still had blood all over me. My eyes were wild, my hair everywhere. The Chileans walked away and I took Anna and we walked out of the hospital.
We drove downtown. It was four or five in the morning. We went into a restaurant, sat down and ordered food and beer. I took Anna’s hand. I looked at her and said, ‘thank you.’ She smiled. What a girl. The food arrived and it was disgusting. We ate half of it, drank the beer and left. We drove down to the same beach where the night had began. We jumped in the back, pulled our blankets over us and kissed. I’d lost so much blood, sex was out of the question. But laying there in the back of the car with her warm body against mine I felt happy to be alive.
57.
We woke up in the morning. I laughed then Anna laughed.
“That was an interesting night,” I said.
“Yes it was,” said Anna.
I could feel a depressive fit coming on. My hand was ruined. I was leaving for the desert the next day. I spoke hardly any Spanish. I knew nobody. I didn’t even know if they had a hospital in this desert town. I ignored it. I pushed it away.
I looked at Anna and smiled. She smiled back. We drove along laughing at billboards, laughing at Chile, laughing at people and laughing at ourselves. It was a good drive and I didn’t want it to end.
58.
We arrived back in Santiago, returned the car and went back to the hostel.
“What happened to your hand, what happened to your hand, what happened to your hand?” they all asked
It didn’t stop. They weren’t interested in me before and now I had an injury, a bandage on my hand, they couldn’t stop talking to me. The were like vultures, like nosy, stupid vultures. They smelt blood, they smelt human misery, they smelt somebody else’s pain and they wanted to revel in it, dance it, soak it up so they could feel better about themselves and their own pathetic situations. Or they were simply and justifiably concerned for my well being.
Anna and another girl took me to the bathroom to change my dressing. Women were always looking after me. I loved women thousands of times more than I liked men. They took me into the bathroom. They undid the bandages. I’ve never fainted or been repulsed by the sight of blood in my life. On the contrary, I’m usually fascinated by injury. It so easy for us humans to break and bleed. And we’re always so confused when it happens. Why? Why? We ask. I have no answer.
Anna and the other girl took the bandage off. I looked at it and had to sit down. My palm was a sickening mess. There were stitches, loose skin and stale blood everywhere. I was positive I’d never use my hand again. I sat down and the girls cleaned me up. I went to bed and waited for the next day.
59.
The next morning I woke up early and prepared to leave. Packing was hard. Everything was hard. I had only one arm. It was hard to get up, it was hard to open my eyes, it was hard to want to live for one more day. I went down stairs. I asked someone to order me a taxi. I said good bye to Anna and two other people. I got in the taxi and went to the airport.
I had made myself a sling from a piece of elastic rubber tubing. My arm hung lamely against my chest. I dragged my bags into the airport and up to the ticket desk. The woman behind the desk looked at my hand and asked for my ticket. I gave it to her. I took by boarding pass and sat waiting for the plane.
I sat there thinking that so much of life was determined by random occurrences. Your friends convince you to go to a party and you meet your future wife. You take the wrong street and two thugs stab you, take your money and leave you to die. You lose your job, then your kids and you end up on the streets. So you get together with another desperate man, you wait in a dark street, stab a man, take his money and leave him to die. Life is cruel to us. People are cruel to other people. It’s a difficult time.
I sat there in the lounge waiting for my plane. I looked at everyone. There were fifty people there. They were living their lives. They were flying to Arica to see family, to do business, to go on holiday. The may enjoy the time with their family, they may make a lucrative deal, they may enjoy their holiday. They may not. They may fight with their family, lose all their money, they may contract malaria. Nobody knew what was going to happen. Life was a game of chance. If you didn’t take the chances you missed out. You die either way.
60.
The plane arrived in the desert, in Arica. We got off and waited for our bags. Everybody stood there waiting. We had nothing else to do. I picked up my bags with difficulty and found a taxi. The taxi driver didn’t speak English and I still didn’t speak Spanish. I told him the address, he nodded his head and began driving. He could’ve been taking me anywhere.
I sat in the front seat looking at the desert that went to the horizon. I looked at the huge sand dunes 200 metres tall. I looked at the long coast line and the ocean that threatened to swallow us up at anytime. The place looked dead. It looked like what I thought hell would look like. People lived here. People live everywhere.
We arrived at the house. My hand hurt. I took my bags out and knocked on the door. A man answered the door. He spoke English. My house was across the road. He gave me the keys and I went inside. It was a nice house. It had a bed, a shower, a toilet and a couch. It was everything I needed. I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling.
61.
I had run away from life as it was meant to be. I had rejected TV and university study. I had rejected dinner parties, freshly mowed lawns, a guaranteed pay check, the evening news, sushi for lunch, conversations about property prices, regular dentist check ups, the right shoes that go with the right pants. I had rejected the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games, Parliament, the United Nations. I’d given up on everything. I didn’t trust anyone or anything. What I had now was a house in the desert for a month, a hand that might become infected and amputated, no friends, no family, no future. I didn’t know what to think. So I fell asleep.
62.
I woke up and decided on a walk to the beach. I’d come to the desert to sit in the sun and be calm. My hand worried me but I could still sit in the sun. I walked out the door and down a gravel side street.
As I walked a Dalmatian dog came up to me. Her teats hung low. She was a mangy dog and she was coming to say hello. I said hello to the dog. She circled around behind me, growled, opened her jaws and latched onto my calf. My arm was in a sling, I had no balance, I slipped on the gravel and landed on my unhurt palm. The palm ripped open. The mutt was over my head barking and growling, lunging for my neck. I punched her in the face. She yelped and ran behind a parked car. I scrambled to my feet and ran back to my house. My freshly injured hand was dripping blood. I opened the door. I somehow washed the hand in the sink, put disinfectant on, wrapped it in toilet paper. I sat on the couch. I was now properly fucked. I sat on the couch, sweating and shivering, thinking about how to kill the dog.
63.
Later that day I visited and talked to the owner of my house. I told him about the dog. He was furious. I liked him. I told him about my hand. He asked, which one? The one with more bandages. I told him I was worried about. I asked him if he could take me to a hospital. He said he knew a nurse. We left the house in search of the nurse.
We found the nurse’s house. It was a man. He talked a lot and his eyes told me he was half crazy. I was afraid. My landlord talked to him. The nurse took my bandages off. My hand was swollen. It was black with fresh blood. I breathed in, breathed out. He washed my hand. He opened a wound of my middle finger and squeezed the pus out. He looked concerned. I looked concerned. My landlord looked concerned. Everyone was concerned and my hand was the cause. It didn’t feel good to be the centre of attention. My other hand, the fresh cut, the dog caused cut, was ok. The cut was small and would heal in a week or so. Everything was ok. We paid the nurse, thanked him and walked out.
The nurse stayed in his house. He was just another of the six billion or so people on this planet trying to buy food and sleep under shelter. A young man from New Zealand had just come to him late in the evening with an infected cut in his hand caused by falling on a beer bottle in Valparaiso. The nurse stood on his door step thinking, 'What a strange world, what an incredibly strange world.'
My landlord and I went back to our respective houses. I thanked him. He said not to worry about it. I smiled at him and he smiled back. I thought to myself, with people like him in the world, everything’s going to be ok.
64.
It was the next morning. I had two damaged hands. I had to eat. Ordering food out was embarrassing and difficult and I usually ended up with something I didn’t want. I went to the supermarket to see what I could eat.
I walked along the dust covered streets. There was an oil refinery near my house. The sign said Shell. There was a pipe going from the refinery to the ocean. When legislation gets too tough in your own country, it’s easier to move business to a less developed and legislated country. They cared less and happily took your money.
I passed a primary school. It was surrounded by high walls with barbed wire. There were big steel gates. I tried to look like someone that didn’t molest children. I tried to look normal. I was tall, white, had two bandaged hands and I stoop a little. I didn’t look normal, I looked like a dangerous creep.
There was an ice cream truck outside the school. There was a coca cola truck too. Most of the kids had ice creams and colas. They were all fat or at least on the way. The really poor kids were in bare feet. They didn’t have ice creams and all of them were thin.
We never seem to learn our lessons. We pollute one country, get scared and run to another. Pollution doesn’t look so bad when it’s new. We start up companies, give one nation of children diabetes and obesity, get driven out of that country and go to another. We do the same to their children. All for money. Even though we have enough money. The money just sits there making more money and lazy children. And then the earth throws up and dies. We all get cancer.
I made it to the supermarket. The supermarket was the same as they are throughout the world. Sure, this wasn’t as nice as the ones in Sweden but it was the same concept. Big car park, lots of cars, trolleys outside, a few fruit and vegetables, some meat, some bread, a lot of chips and confectionary, two aisles of booze and about 35 depressed looking supermarket employees working for minimum wage.
I decided on pizza. Pizza I could slide into an oven, slide out, some how manage to cut, shove into my mouth, chew, swallow, digest. I bought a pear too so I would stay healthy. And some wine for help with sleeping. I took my food up to the cashier to pay for it. She asked me a question. I said, ‘si.’ That didn’t work. She just looked at me expectantly. So I shook my head and said, ‘no.’ She nodded her head and continued adding up my bill. My Spanish was getting better.
I went back to the house and cooked the pizza. It was good. It was hot food and I hadn’t really eaten for a couple of days. I’d been busy with cuts and dogs. I decided to eat pizza everyday. In the morning I lie around reading. I’d eat my pear for breakfast. I’d go for a walk then come home and spend the afternoon lying around drawing. At night I’d eat pizza and drink wine. It was the good life.
65.
After day five of eating pizza and pears something happened.
Something was wrong. I ran to the toilet, lifted up the lid and threw up my putrid diet. I quickly got up, slammed the lid down, ripped down my pants and emptied my diseased colon. I leaned over, pulled back the shower curtain and threw up in the shower. I did this in sequence a few more times. I was sweating. My skin was pale. I shivered and sat there for an hour, too delicate and too scared to move.
I got off the toilet and turned on the shower. I cleaned up both my messes. I wasn’t a beautiful human being. I was disgusting. When the mess was gone, I sat in the shower, my damaged hand hanging over the edge. I sat there for another hour groaning. I got out of the shower and dried myself. I was very weak.
I dragged myself over to the bed. My honeymoon was over. Everything was bad again. There was a full length mirror in front of my bed. I lay there looking at myself. I didn’t look good, nothing looked good. I looked at myself and said, ‘It’s time for you to leave.
66.
I began eating better. I made regular trips to the hospital. My landlord came with me and translated. He really was a kind and beautiful man. We would go to the hospital and he would talk to the receptionist for me. He would sit in the waiting room with me. The doctor would come and get us and he would talk to the doctor for me. The doctors cleaned my hand, consoled me, and sent me on my way. My landlord was always with me. Don’t believe everything they say about landlords. Without mine I would’ve been in a lot of trouble.
67.
I’d decided to leave Chile. It wasn’t working out for me.
I started walking into Arica township daily. Like I said earlier, it was a dusty town. The wind was hot and dry and all the citizens walked slowly. The town centre was a long strip of shops. It wasn’t bad for a small town. I found a lot of benches to sit on in the shade and watch the people walk by. The old men would sit next to me. They knew and I knew that sitting and watching things go by was the only thing to do.
68.
I found a Chilean airline company booking office, LAN Chile, on the main shopping strip. Things were looking up for me. I walked inside. It was air conditioned. There was a long row of sales assistants. I picked the prettiest girl there. She had a soft, upside-down pear-shaped face, big round eyes, her hair was in a neat pony tail and she had painted her lips bright red. She looked like a doll. I wanted to play with her.
I sat down and she smiled.
“Hablas ingles?” I asked.
“I speak English,” she said, laughing at me.
It wasn’t nice to laugh but I forgave her. I looked ridiculous. Something between a bum and a clown. My clothes were dirty, my hair was everywhere, my face was burnt and gaunt, and I had my arm in a ridiculous sling. I laughed at myself.
She asked how she could help.
'You can take me home, bathe me, put me in new clothes and look after me for the rest of my life,' I thought
“I’d like a ticket to Canada,” I said.
It was her second day on the job and she was the worst sales girl there. I couldn’t have cared less, she was beautiful to watch. It was difficult to get a ticket to Canada. I had to come back to the office four times over the next two weeks. I was getting more and more distressed and desperate each time. But when I walked in and saw her face I relaxed. I knew she would help me. She had to.
69.
As I waited for my ticket I lay around my home, my prison, and walked daily around the town. I was beginning to think I would never get out, that I’d be in this shit hole forever. I could see myself, forty years old, blind, an amputated hand, sitting on the streets, sucking on a bottle of cheap local liquor, begging with my tattered old cap in front of me.
70.
One day I went to the hospital and they took my stitches out. One of the stitches burst something on the way out and pus ran down my hand. I was concerned but the doctor said not to worry about it. He said my hand would be fine, it wouldn’t get infected, all I had to do was exercise it and wait for it to heal. My world changed. I had hope again. I imagined all the things I could do with two hands.
71.
The next day I climbed a big cliff that looks over the town of Arica. The town wasn’t much to look at. At the city’s centre was the retail strip, this was circled by small businesses, then homes, then cheaper homes, then huts made from corrugated iron. A cruise ship with ten thousand rich Americans sailed past the harbour, all of them lounging back next to one of the four swimming pools on board or having a complimentary massage whilst sipping a strong mojito. A lady in rags came up to me and offered me what looked like a rat kebab for 2000 pesos. I gave her the money and said no to the kebab. I wondered if the world would ever change.
I kept walking around the mountain top. There were two Chilean police officers on dirt bikes having a chat and a laugh. There was a Chilean flag flying. A group of Japanese tourists disembarked from a huge air conditioned bus and walked around taking photographs. There was a statue of the Virgin Mary and a statue of a revolutionary. I walked to the edge of the cliff and watched the crows playing in the wind. I thought about jumping off.
72.
I woke up the next day and walked to the LAN Chile office. My ticket was there. I was leaving the next day. I took my ticket, thanked my Chilean goddess saviour and nearly skipped all the way home. I had a ticket back to Santiago and then onto Vancouver. I was going to a country where they spoke my language! I could buy food! I would be understood!
73.
The next day I woke up and packed my bags. I said goodbye my landlord. I shook his hand. I looked into his eyes and thanked him. He smiled. I smiled. I paid him what I owed him and got into a taxi. I sat in the taxi smiling. My life was changing. Everything was going to be good. I thought of Canada. I thought of all the people I could talk to. I thought of all the friends I would make. I’d probably get a good job. I was going to make it. Life was going to be good.
I flew back to Santiago and took the Aero Centro bus into town. I was happy and confident. Nobody scared me. I walked the streets arrogant and determined. I went back to La Casa Blanco. I wanted to go somewhere else where the people didn’t know me but it was easier to go back to what I knew. It always is.
I walked in.
“Hey, you’re back!” said some of the staff members.
“I need a room.”
They gave me a key. I didn’t go to my room. I went straight to the staff quarters, to my old room. I didn’t want to be near other people. My room mate was gone. He’d flown to the French Alps. The room was empty. I got a bottle of wine, went back to the room, drank the wine, read a book and fell asleep.
74.
The next day I was sitting vacantly and waiting for the day to end. Anna walked up to me. I gave her a kiss and smiled at her. She smiled at me. It was good to see her.
‘How was the desert?’ she asked
‘Dramatic.’
‘How’s your hand?’
‘It feels better.’
‘Want to get some food?
‘Yes.’
It was simple and beautiful. It was all it needed to be. We found food. We ate, drank wine, talked, and went to bed. The earth rotated around the sun. The tides went out and came back in. Everything was good.
75.
There was a guy named Dane who worked at the hostel. Like Andrew, he was another of those people that appear briefly in your life, people that you never see gain but remember forever.
Dane had long wild greasy hair that stuck out from his head like it knew he was insane. He was Hungarian. He spoke Hungarian, Romanian, Spanish, French, English, German and Portuguese. I spoke English and could count up to ten in Spanish. We spoke English to each other.
Dane was the smartest person there. He was the smartest person everywhere. He was surly and rude and his tongue was quick to insult. I would play cards against him. He’d remember every card that was played. I never won. He was always high on cocaine. He was a genius, a drug addict, a hostel clerk, he was broke and unhappy. I liked him.
Months ago when I first arrived at La Casa Blanco, I had returned from a walk with Andrew. Dane was sitting at the front desk.
“Hello”, we said
“How’s it going ladies?” Dane had asked and smiled
“Shut your fucking mouth,” I'd said.
From that day on Dane liked me too.
I had four days before I was leaving for Vancouver. I didn’t care about Santiago anymore. I didn’t care about anything. I didn’t want to walk around anymore. I didn’t want to see anything.
When most people are about to leave a place they get sentimental and regretful about all the things they haven’t done or seen. I didn’t care. I was just glad to leave the rotten place behind. I blamed Chile for my unhappiness. People do that. You blame an event, a situation, a person or a place for the unhappiness you have created yourself.
Dane was continually offering me cocaine. I always said no. I was in a strange country. I didn’t trust anybody. I wasn’t going to do anything with anybody that could put me in jail. As often as I was confused, distrustful or contemptuous of life, I knew it could only be worse in a foreign jail.
I grew to trust Dane implicitly. He was an angry stubborn bastard of a man that attacked anybody that said a word against me. He would hardly let them talk to me. He was like a fiercely loyal cross bred mutt. I wasn’t his master. I was his brother. Or better yet, his pup that he protected and adored.
We ate dinner together and sat around doing nothing together. I had known him for a sum total of perhaps two weeks and felt like I’d known him my whole life. Sometimes this happens between people. Call it an understanding, a connection, destiny, call it whatever you like. It just happens. So I succumbed to Stan’s cocaine offers.
I didn’t want to leave the hostel. He agreed. I didn’t want anybody else around apart from him, me, Anna and a huge Mexican named Ricardo that Dane had known for two years. We were a good team. We settled down to business.
We sat in the room for 24 hours. We drank beer from big bottles. We played cards, listened to music, danced and laughed, fought and hugged. The world was our room and the world was alright. I went to sleep. My plane was leaving in 6 hours. I was in trouble.
76.
I woke up shivering. It wasn’t cold. My body was reacting reasonably to my stupidity. I lay down on the couch. I had an hour before my taxi arrived. Other people stood next to me saying nothing, simply suggesting with their silence that I move my feet so they could sit on the couch too. I pulled my hat lower. If these lame ducks couldn’t tell a fool like me to move, they could stand there all day.
Dane and Anna walked by. They were still awake from the previous night. They didn’t look good. I didn’t look good. Nothing looked any good. They looked at me. I smiled a goodbye at them. They smiled a goodbye at me and went to bed. You don’t always need words to say something meaningful.
I got up to leave. People said goodbye to me. I wondered who they were. I got in the taxi van with three other people. I sat still. We always seemed to do this sort of thing to ourselves. We do something that we knew we shouldn’t do. We delay, delay, delay the action and all of a sudden we give in. Usually the action comes after thinking the words, fuck it. Like sleeping with an old friend. Or someone uglier than you. Or spending money on drinks you know you can’t afford. Alcohol is usually involved. You wake up the next morning and think, why? We always seem to be thinking the words fuck it and why?
I pushed the van window open a crack. I was nauseous. People were talking to me. I was saying things back. The conversation was about town names and lengths of time spent in places. It was easy conversation. I didn’t have to be there for it.
The van was making a strange noise. The driver pulled over. He got out and looked at the motor and then at the wheels. He didn’t know what he was doing. Neither did I. The driver got back in the van. We were running late. The noise kept going. The driver pulled over again. I was getting irritated. I sat there thinking, If the van goes, drive it. The driver kicked or hit something. He got back in. The noise had stopped. We drove on and finally arrived at the airport.
I walked up to the check in. I took my boarding pass from the lady and waited in the waiting room. I picked at the scab on my palm. My hand was healing. The scab was the length and width of my thumb. It was grotesque but enjoyable to touch. It was like sand paper on my hand. Each time I injured myself, my body healed itself. It was strange to watch. At times my body seemed to want to live more than I did.
I was uncomfortable. I went to the bathroom and looked at the mirror. I pretended not to notice that I looked bad. Pale skin, drawn bloodshot eyes, sweat, pain. I splashed my face with cold water hoping it would fix everything. I looked up. No good. Bending over and standing up had made me feel worse.
I sat down. Then we all boarded the plane. The hostess took my ticket and looked at me suspiciously. I agreed with her. I tried a smile but only grimaced. I found my seat, leant against the window and pretended to sleep. The plane took off. We were flying to Miami.
77.
I arrived in Miami not feeling much better.
I’ve never been able to sleep on planes. I’ve hardly ever been able to sleep in a bed. I’m wary of people that sleep too easily. How do they switch off like that? Does their mind simply switch off after a certain length of time and succumb to the body’s desire? How does a dictator sleep knowing that his soldiers are ruthlessly maiming and murdering his citizens? And if he doesn’t sleep, how does he have the energy to be a dictator all day? So, if he is an effective dictator then he must sleep well. Therefore anyone that sleeps well has the potential to be ruthless dictator. Hence I am wary of them.
I had a six hour wait in Miami before my six hour flight to Houston and then a six hour wait in Houston before my eight hour flight to Vancouver. It was going to be difficult. I still needed to clear security at Miami so I could wait around in the airport for six hours.
Whilst passing through security I had to stand in a machine not unlike a plastic phone box. The machine sent a huge gust of air all around me. I put my personal belongings through an x-ray machine. I walked through a metal detector. An obese female airport security official pulled me over to one side.
‘Please sit down sir’, she said.
I sat down.
‘Please remove your shoes sir.’
I removed my shoes. She scanned them with something. There was nothing in my shoes.
‘Are you carrying any narcotics sir?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure sir.’
‘Yes.’
‘Ok sir, please put your shoes back on, collect your belongings and go through to the departure terminal.’
‘Ok.’
‘Oh, one thing,’ I asked, ‘what does that machine with the air do?’
‘It checks for bomb particles sir,’ she said.
‘Does it work?’
‘Yes sir, it does work,’ she said.
‘Ok, thank you.’
‘You have a nice day sir.’
‘You too.’
She wasn’t going to have a nice day and neither was I. She’d ask the same questions, check people’s shoes and answer the same stupid questions. I would sit around hung over and exhausted in hostile airports and aeroplanes. I went to look for some food. I thought I could do it.
I found a place with a balcony that was almost empty. I ordered pancakes with banana and bacon and a big glass of juice. It felt strange to sit on a balcony in the airport The restaurant was a building inside of a bigger building. The restaurant looked like it should’ve been outside. The airport looked like it should’ve been in outer space. I guess it was the first step to living in a bio-dome. I heavily secured bio-dome. I wasn’t looking forward to the future.
I finished my meal and sat at the gate. I had only five hours to wait. The airport management had made the conscious decision to install fixed arm rests on each seat. This meant people wouldn’t lay around on the seats all day making the airport looking like a homeless shelter. I guess they hoped that rather than sleeping, everyone would walking around shopping and buying perfume, bad books and new luggage. Instead people just found a corner and slept on the floor. All the arm rests in the world wouldn’t stop an exhausted man sleeping. I found a corner and tried to sleep.
Eventually the time came for us to board the plane. I stayed seated. The flight attendants said we could now board the plane. Most people grabbed their things and rushed up to stand in line. I sat there with my legs stretched out. I watched the people standing in line. They queued eagerly so they could get on the plane and squeeze themselves into small seats and sit there for six hours. I waited until the line was gone, got up, handed the attendants my boarding pass and passport, said hello, good, and thank you, walked onto the plane and boarded second to last.
I was exhausted but felt better. I ordered a wine and sat back to watch movies. I was cramped but comfortable and looked forward to arriving in Vancouver. First I had to go to Dallas and wait six hours, then fly for eight hours. You have to patient in this world.
78.
I arrived in Dallas. It was all the same. X-ray machines, bomb machines, metal detectors, shoe checks, questions. Flying was dangerous. People were dangerous. Everyone was cautious. Everything we do is in apprehension. We’re scared of terrorists, of old age, poverty, cancer, assault, diabetes, robbery, being ripped off, environmental destruction, hunger, rape, and insomnia. Most of all, we’re scared of other people. And rightly so. Experience has taught us some lessons.
Houston airport was much the same as Miami. It was much the same as every airport in the world. It was a huge open space with thousands of people either walking around in circles or sitting. Everyone was waiting. Waiting for planes, waiting for happiness, waiting for a spouse, waiting for people to stop killing each other, waiting for people to stop hating each other because of what they thought or what colour skin they were. They were waiting for the dream.
I walked around in circles. I had a drink in a sports bar. They'd done what they could to help you forget you were in an airport. It felt like I was in a real city bar. Everything was made from wood and the seats were padded. There were framed football jerseys on the wall and signed autographs of big men that run around with balls for a living. There was a big screen TV playing the latest game of American football. A group of men were running around kicking, throwing and scrambling over a ball. They were grabbing each other and throwing each other on the ground. One of the men held the ball and ran over a line. Half the crowd jumped up and started screaming with delight and waving their arms around. The other half just sat their looking sad and dejected. There was a lot of emotion in the game. I left the bar.
I sat waiting. I looked at everyone. There were families and couples, groups of friends and people on their own. Some people were dressed in suits, others in track pants and slippers. Some were tapping on laptops, others were reading, some were listening to music, there was a lot of talking and only a few people sat in silence staring out the window. The planes landed and took off. The loud speaker kept saying names. Names of people and cities and aeroplane companies. The sun slowly moved across the sky. I was bored.
We boarded the plane. I waited for the queue to be gone, sat down, waited for the plane to take off, waited for my food, waited for my drink, waited for the movie to finish, waited for the person next to me to stop talking, waited for the toilet to be empty, waited for the plane to land, waited for the seatbelt sign to be turned off, waited for the people in front to get off, waited for my bags and waited in the line at customs.
79.
I was in the line at Vancouver airport customs control. Once again I didn’t know what I was doing. I had an address for a hostel in Gastown. That was it. Those were the extent of my plans. I was exhausted. Every part of me was heavy. I could hardly hold my bags. I could hardly hold my head, shoulders or elbows. I wanted to lay down but it would’ve been inappropriate. Eventually it was my turn. I walked up to and talked to the customs man with the bullet proof vest and gun. He looked at me intimidatingly. I looked at him fearfully.
“How long are you planning on being in Canada?” he asked
“I'm not sure,” I said, “I have no plans.”
“You're not sure? You have no plans?” he asked incredulously, almost intimidatingly.
“That's right.”
“Do you have a job in New Zealand?”
“Not anymore.”
“Are you planning on working in Canada?”
“No.”
I was planning on working in Canada.
The man wrote something on my arrival card, he said ok and passed my passport back to me. I knew what was coming, it had happened so many times before. I walked up to the declaration zone. Predictably the airport security staff pointed me down the red line, the line for degenerates, the line where they search your bags and ask you questions.
I walked up to a counter. There was a young man standing there. He also wore a bullet proof vest and a gun.
They x-rayed and scanned you so many times before they even allowed you into the airport and these people were still scared. Something truly bad must’ve happened to them.
“Hello,” I said, trying to smile but only grimacing.
“Put your bag on the counter please,” he said without smiling.
I put my bag on the counter.
“Are you carrying any narcotics, weaponry, illegal pornography or large sums of cash?”
“No.”
I was so utterly sick and tired of everyone’s questions. I am a harmless man that just likes to be left alone. My vision was beginning to falter, the room was moving. I looked terrible. I’d been awake for too long. I’d been in three countries in the last 24 hours, my hair was everywhere, my face gaunt, my immune and circulatory systems were disturbed. I was sweating. It was so obvious why they’d pulled me aside for questioning.
“Am I going to find anything illegal in your bag or on your person today sir?”
Why did they call me sir when they so obviously didn’t trust or respect me?
“No.”
The man began taking everything out of my bag. It had taken me so long to stuff everything in there. It had been such a chore, such a bore. And now I was going to have to do it all over again. I leant against the bench, my legs didn’t feel good.
“Sir, please step away from the bench.”
I stepped away from the bench. It wasn’t fair, nothing was fair. Every self absorbed bastard out there was allowed to walk and talk freely just because they had jobs and relatives and places to stay. Me who was open minded and usually kind was subjected to this humiliating treatment. It served me right for being different.
The man took my tooth brush, my shoes, and my small back pack away from me and went to swab them for narcotics. Drugs. Whatever. Two guards with bullet proof vests and guns came over to watch me while he was gone. I lent on the bench to see what they would say. They said nothing. They didn’t give a damn about me. If I tried anything, they’d shoot me and go home to feed their dog and yell at their kids. The young man returned. The swabs were back negative. The young man took me aside and into a little booth with a curtain.
“At this point in time, sir, I have the option of taking you into another room and conducting a body search. At all times there will be another guard present and at any time you can ask for the search to be stopped and request the presence of a lawyer.”
It all sounded so humiliating.
“I’m will give you the opportunity to come clean with me about any drugs you may be carrying on you and there whereabouts.”
I breathed in and breathed out.
“Look,” I said, “I’ve been travelling for 24 hours. I have had little to no sleep in the last two days. I’m exhausted. I realise that I look dishevelled. It’s because I am dishevelled. My hair is everywhere, my eyes are wild, I’m nervous and I’m sweating. I’m nervous and I’m sweating because I’m nervous. I’m being interrogated by powerful men with guns that are accusing me of bringing drugs into their country. Of course I'm nervous and scared.
“I’m not an idiot. I know you have security at these airports. I know you have sniffer dogs and swab tests and extensive psychological training to tell when someone is lying. I have just come from South America, I’m travelling alone, I don’t have any plans for my time in Canada, I am a young male with very little baggage and my appearance at this current point in time makes me look like a drug user. It’s obvious why you chose me for interrogation. It is your job and I fit a profile. If you find any traces of drugs on me, it will be tiny traces of cocaine. I used it one time and one time only in Chile. I was in safe environment with people I trusted. I did not bring any drugs into your country because I’m not that stupid. I don’t want to go to prison, I don’t want to make large amounts of money from drug trafficking.
“All I want to do is freely explore your apparently beautiful country without the restriction of plans and timetables. I realise I do not fit the mould of your normal traveller and therefore you are forced to question me about my reasons for entering your country and what my plans are whilst I’m here.
“I don’t know what else to say. I don’t have any narcotics on me.”
The young man looked surprised. I hadn’t said much up until this point. He walked with me back to my bags and helped pack my things away. I asked him about his job. He said he was new at it but he liked it. He told me I should try and look a little more respectable when I travelled, maybe wear a shirt. That was all it took. If you’re trafficking drugs, wear a shirt. The young man pointed me out and onto my next nightmare: immigration.
I sat waiting in the immigration room for an hour. I was beginning to lose my mind. I thought about telling them anything, telling them I planned to work in Canada, that I wanted to rob and kill people, blow up buildings, shoot children and steal national treasures. Then hopefully they’d arrest me, take me to a cell, I could sleep and this nightmare would be over.
Eventually a female with a gun and vest called me over. There were steel wires in front of her face to stop me jumping over the counter and assaulting her. The whole world seemed to hate and distrust everyone. She interrogated me for a while. By this time I was relaxed. I’d given up caring, everything was a joke. I didn’t worry anymore. I just stood there smiling not taking anything seriously. I relaxed her. Her stern face softened. We began talking about her travel plans, about how she’d like to go to New Zealand. She gave me advice on where to go in Canada. She was bad at her job. Her job description clearly stated that she was to be as inhuman and cold as possible. She was being understanding, considerate and kind. Women have their faults too, but when it comes to compassion, men are often lacking. She understood what I was doing, she wished she could do the same, she stamped my passport, wished me luck and I went outside.
80.
I sat down on a bench for a minute and put my head in my lap. I breathed in and breathed out. I blinked my eyelids. My heart pumped blood into my finger tips and little toes. The water sloshed around my body. I lit a cigarette, smoked it, threw the butt away and got in a cab.
The cab drove along the streets and through the traffic lights and I looked at Vancouver. Everything seemed normal. There were street lamps and corner stores, yellow and white road lines, buses, trucks and cars. There was smog and poverty. It like home. It felt like every city I’d ever been to. The airport was 20 minutes from downtown.
I talked to the cab driver. Appropriately he was from overseas. Appropriately he wasn’t white. Appropriately he was over educated to drive a cab. He couldn’t get a job elsewhere.
He told me about his home country, about the poverty and the difficulties he faced and how glad he was to be in Canada. He told me he would prefer to be doing something else other than driving a cab, but that was life. He lifted his shoulders and raised both his palms towards the ceiling and back down to illustrate to me that he was resigned to his fate. I watched the steering wheel and the road. While he was resigning he was putting me in danger.
Poor taxi man, I thought. Poor everybody. Driving a taxi is better than living in your own country, working in a factory is better than living in your own country, cleaning other people’s shit from the side of toilet bowls everyday is better than living in your own country.
The only ones that benefit are the people that own the businesses and employ these people for very little money. These owners are lauded as entrepreneurs and successes, they’re admired by their friends and family and community for the jobs they've created and the money they amass from their hard work and the hard work of other people. These clever men had to work hard to set up their business and risk everything they had. So they now apparently deserve the reward of idling their days away awaiting death, maybe travelling the world, while their workers work their souls and minds into the concrete floor, retiring at the required age, dead and fucked with a tiny pension, a thank you card, an average quality watch and cancer about to take hold of their lungs.
That’s one side of the story. Most of the people working these horrible jobs, the ones I worked with, the ones you work with, don’t even know. They don’t know they’re in hell, they don’t even think it’s hell, they thinks it’s life. They’re resigned to working 40 hours a week, going home, getting drunk, screwing somebody, anybody, gambling, drinking more, eating, sleeping, waking up, going to work, hating it, waiting for the weekend, repeating it all for 45 years of their life, retiring and dying. They’re retarded from the moment they’re born and they never learn a thing. Their life seems hardly worth living. Their only purpose on this earth is to be to take up space, waste precious oxygen and make another man’s life more comfortable. They go from the womb to the school to the work place not thinking about a single damn thing and all of a sudden they’re old, dying and full of hate for the life given to them. They had a whole lifetime to figure it out and now they die miserable and confused.
At least the rich ones had the foresight to get out of the horrible mess. But they sacrificed their minds with ten or twenty years of petty business and money concerns. The workers have nothing to worry about after five o‘clock. Except gas bills, electricity bills, mortgage payments, care payments, dentist bills, hospital bills, food bills, phone bills, insurance payments, clothing, feeding and educating of their children. Each day everyone fights so many battles, each day continually kicked in the face just as you think you're getting on top.
81.
The cab pulled up to the hostel in Gastown, Vancouver. It looked like a good area. Nicely run down with not too much white paint, glass or chrome around. I paid the driver, went inside, paid for a room and went to sleep.
I woke up in fear. There was a man in my room. I searched quietly and desperately for my pocket knife. I never used the knife but I it made me feel less pathetic and cowardly than I am. I tensed my muscles, let the adrenaline flow, and prepared to defend myself.
Then I remembered I’d paid for a twin share room. I put the knife down.
“Hi, I’m Willem,” I said.
The man didn‘t say anything back. He was packing up to leave. He left.
I got up and went for a walk around Vancouver. There were pedestrian crossings, restaurants, clothing stores, train stations, billboards and roundabouts. And people, there were always people. That’s why there’s cities. So people have somewhere to go and something to do. There were tall buildings filled with people working at difficult and important projects, people hoping to eventually stop the earth from throwing out a whole series of hurricanes, tidal waves, volcanoes, earthquakes and extreme changes in weather and temperature to rid itself of the human scourge that was treating it so impolitely. There were others working in accounting firms and some writing stories for the daily newspaper.
I walked around the back of Gastown. It was horrifying. I was outnumbered by the homeless. They could have grouped together and taken me whenever the wanted. I gripped my knife. But they didn’t do anything. They just fought and yelled with each other or themselves. They just sat there stinking, desperate, not a thing but poverty and hunger in their lives. Just around the corner up the hill were fashion stores and art galleries. The tourist information bureau was there. And here I was walking around with the bums. They weren’t anything special either. They weren’t people that refused the system. They weren’t working on a great piece of art, philosophy or governmental structure. They wanted the same things as everyone else. They wanted riches and power. But they were just too useless and pathetic to get it. They got drugs, cheap alcohol and insanity instead. The mental hospitals were closed, the shelters were full and the general public were hardened and disinterested. Each man and woman was to look after themselves, and it seems quite a few can’t.
I took the ferry across the harbour to another part of Vancouver. I’m unsure of the name. There was a market on the other side that sold ice creams, Canadian souvenirs, cheap sunglasses and ten minute massages. All the things you see in every market everywhere.
As I sat on the ferry I daydreamed. I was relaxed and content. As we left the city behind, the morning sun lightly shining, everything with a soft, beautiful touch, I glanced with dreamy eyes towards the city skyline, and hoped to see a grotesque, grey taxpayer funded missile scream across the sky and slam into the buildings, razing the whole city to nothing. While the other clever ferry passengers and I safely floated towards the market. I felt like an ice cream.
There was a big hill in this other part of Vancouver. If you take a bus from the market you can go to the bottom of the hill, pay money, ride a gondola to the top of the hill, get out, walk around, look at the view, look at the bears they keep in small enclosures and come back down. In winter you can get on the gondola, go up the hill, ski down the hill, get on the gondola, go up the hill, ski back down the hill, get on the gondola, go up etc. I decided to go.
I got on the bus and sat up the back. The bus was empty and about to leave when a family of five got on. They walked up the back of the bus and sat one seat in front of me. I got up, walked to the front of the bus and sat down. The bus left. We were going to the big hill.
We got there and it was magnificent. Ancient maple trees grew everywhere. It was a forest. The mountainside was millions of years old. There were hungry hawks stalking the sky. The earth as it should be. The tourists with their voices and their constant photo taking tried their very best to ruin it for me.
We went up in the gondola. At the top was a path that looped around the mountain top. The twenty or so tourists all turned right, cackling away. I turned left and entered the slightly sterilised but beautiful wilderness. There were birds calling to each other, squirrels running around, there was every level of vegetation fighting and scrambling for sunlight. The air was cool and clean and most of all, it was quiet. Only the animals made any noise and I imagine each sound had a purpose. Each call was a warning or a greeting or a mating call. I couldn’t imagine the squirrels sitting around bitching about other squirrels or arguing over what was the best way to eat acorns. I couldn’t imagine them eating acorns all day, getting fatter and fatter until they could hardly move and eventually dying of a heart attack or diabetes. Animals don’t seem to be as stupid, depressed or confused as people.
I kept walking. I saw an owl and a racoon and an elk. Eventually I was half way around the track when I heard another animal. It was making a huge racket, stumbling and crashing through the forest. Everything else went quiet, the other animals big and small disappeared, everything, including me, was dumb founded and frightened as to what could be so clumsy and boorish.
Of course, it was the other tourists. We were crossing paths at the halfway point. They all said hello and isn’t it beautiful and I said yes, yes, yes and they kept walking, snapping and laughing away. It was like a bulldozer had driven through and destroyed the forest. It would probably happen one day soon. The forest was quiet again. All the animals were gone.
I arrived at the bear cage. It was a miniature forest on a mound. It was perhaps 200 square metres. Ten metres, by twenty metres, surrounded by an high electric fence. Around the fence were all the people. Two black bears were inside. They slowly walked the enclosure, bored with their lives. They lay down. They got bored of that and walked slowly around again, all the while looking for an escape.
The people were all around, videoing, taking photos, calling to the bears, whistling, clapping their hands, trying to get the bear’s attention. The bears had hardly anywhere to hide. It looked like a forest but it was so very small. These beautiful giants had nowhere to go. There was no river with fat salmon they could scoop up with their claws, play with, rip to pieces and jam down their throats. There were no deer they could terrorise or bee hives they could knock down and eat. There wasn’t even a camper in a tent they could frighten. All they wanted to do was run amok attacking things and sleeping for months at time. Instead they were caged.
All the people walked around and around the enclosure, following the bears, driving them closer and closer to insanity, nowhere to go, nothing to do, stuck in that jail. The bears were like people with 25 year mortgages. Repetition and boredom. It was so depressing. I apologised to the bears, cursed the people, went down the gondola, took the bus, got on the ferry, walked back to downtown Vancouver, to the hostel, sat down in the bar beneath the hostel, bought a beer and decided to get drunk.
82.
A hen laid an egg and she sat on it for a while, the egg cracked, a fluffy little yellow chick stumbled out wondering what the hell was going on. The chick walked around for a while eating, sleeping and growing. The farmer pumped the chick with antibiotics and growth hormones. The chick grew into a chicken. The farmer put the chicken in a cage the size of it’s fattened body and put it on a truck with hundreds of other chickens,. The truck drove to an abattoir. A man cut the chicken’s head off with a butchers knife. The blood was drained from it’s body. Another man threw the chicken on a machine and the machine pulled all the feathers out. Another man picked up the chicken, cut it open, chopped it into parts and threw the different parts into separate trays. Another man packed the chicken breasts into boxes and froze them. Thousands of thigh and breast boxes were put on a truck and driven to a distribution centre. The owner of a bar ordered chicken breasts. The breasts arrived. The chef defrosted them and later threw one on the grill, cooked one side and then the other. He took the breast off, put it on a grilled and buttered bun, put squirted mayonnaise on put lettuce, tomato, cheese, onion, relish, and the other half of the bun on top. He put a skewer through the bun, vegetables and chicken to keep it all together and hit a bell on the bench. A pretty young waitress picked up the plate, walked over to my table, put down the plate and took my order number away. I picked up the burger, put in in my mouth, took a bite, chewed, swallowed, put it down. It cost me $8.50 plus tax and tip. It was delicious.
I continued to drink beer. The trapped, jailed bears had depressed me horribly. I didn’t like people at that point. The beer made me warm and shut my mind down a bit. I started talking to a man of about 38 years old. He’d been a chemist. He’d sold his house, his pharmacy and all of his assets. He now owned only an old car and a suitcase of clothes. He said life, the normal, average life, wasn’t offering him any fulfilment. He’d been miserable and bored. So he’d decided to travel. He’d also started safely experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs such as mescaline and mushrooms. He was a chemist. He knew about drugs and about the human body and mind. He knew what he was doing. He said he’d never felt so good in his life. Not because of the drugs. They were a insignificant aside. He said for the first time since he was a child he felt excitement again. He felt joy and anticipation. He didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing and he was the happiest he’d ever been. I was glad for him. I felt optimistic again. There are good people out there, people willing to push themselves and disregard what they’ve been told. After the chicken, the beer and the conversation I felt wonderful. I went to bed a happy man.
83.
I woke the next afternoon and lay in bed. I could hear all the voices outside in the courtyard of the bar below. They were happy voices filled with laughter and contentment, the voices of friends glad to be around each other. I was alone. Horribly alone. There was no one for thousands of miles around that would greet me warmly and care about me. Nobody that cared if I slept in a bed or in a grave. I lay there and pined for friendship, for a well known face. I was weak, sentimental and pathetic. There were thousands of people all over the world that’d had their entire families murdered. They were alone. I was merely unable to handle a situation I’d put myself in.
After readjusting, I got out of bed, showered, washed, dried, walked, clothed, sat, put my shoes on, stood up, keys, money, passport, outside. I walked past all the people in the outside courtyard of the bar downstairs. They all sat there cackling and roaring away, drunkenly laughing and spilling their drinks all over themselves. They acted now as they never normally acted. The were smashed and able to enjoy the company of each other, of themselves. Finally, after drinking heavily, they could free themselves from the daily anxieties that pained their minds. They could forget about money, loneliness and death. They could finally relax and enjoy an afternoon in the sun with other people. Me, I kept on walking by. I was better than that. And no one wanted to talk to me.
I walked around Vancouver lazily looking for jobs. I’d walk into a bar tended by gorgeous girls, stand around looking, walk up to the bar, and ask for a job unenthusiastically. They’d look at me, sum me up, conclude I was no good, say no, and I’d walk out. It was fine with me. I didn’t really want to work, I was just waiting for evening so I could go back to bed.
84.
I hung around Vancouver for a few more days. It’s a good city, that has an edge and life to it, but I wanted to keep moving. And I hadn’t found that elusive thing I was looking for, that reason to live.
85.
I boarded a bus to Calgary. I chose Calgary because it was on the map. I didn’t know anything about it. Cal-ga-ry, it sounded strange. I didn’t like these bus trips but they were my only means of getting around. Hitchhiking was too personal, you never knew who would be in the car . You could be stuck with a talker or a silent nut. You never knew what would happen. Which is exciting, but on a bus there are witnesses to any crimes committed against you.
The bus was like any bus. Big, with seats, wheels, luggage compartments and reading lights. I usually travelled at night and because I can hardly ever sleep I nearly always had the light on. The other passengers hated me. And they didn’t even know me. I knew how they felt. There always seems to be at least a hundred people in a day that hate you. The guy behind you in the line at the petrol station, the woman that shows up at the payphone when you’re in it, the hungry person that walks past you when you’re eating a sandwich. Invariably, people are going to find some reason to dislike about you.
I managed to keep people from sitting next to me for most of the trip. When the bus stopped to pick people up, I feigned sleep. I spread myself over the two seats, closed my eyes, opened my mouth, let my tongue hang out a bit and breathed heavily. I made myself disgusting.
It worked until the whole bus was full except one seat, the one next to me. We stopped for a break and when I returned to my seat someone was sitting next to me. I resigned myself to this rude intrusion, gathered my belongings and squeezed myself against the window. Despite all my internal complaining I felt quite eloquent and sociable. I guess I was bored.
So I started talking to the man next to me. He told me he had worked many jobs. Mining, painting, truck driving, the rest. I told him about my travels. The bus stopped and when we got back on I shared my hot chips with him. I shared my chocolate bar with him. We talked for a long time and then we were silent.
He pulled a large cookie from his bag and ate it all himself. We talked a little more. He was still friendly and I was beginning to distrust him.
He started talking again. He told me how he was running from the police, that he had no job, no money, and no where to stay. He told me he'd snuck on the bus and without paying. He said his buddy that was sitting three rows ahead was a paedophile.
I was scared. I knew he had a knife on him, he was the sort. Maybe he had a gun. He started talking about staying with me in Calgary. I wanted to get away from him. I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t get off the bus, I couldn’t sit anywhere else. I could’ve got up and stood in the aisle at the back of the bus. But I would’ve looked ridiculous. And what would I've say to the people sitting down the back? That I was a frightened, manic depressive, paranoiac, neurotic, part time alcoholic, insomniac? It would’ve scared them. They would've all walked to the front of the bus and stood warily in the aisle. Maybe the bus driver would let me sit with him?
I stayed in my seat. I was terrified for the next three hours until we arrived in Calgary. As we arrived at the bus station my new friends eyes grew wide. There were three police cars waiting. He got up from his seat. He didn’t say good bye to me. He demanded the police informant bus driver let him off. The bus driver let him off as the cops surrounded the door. There wasn’t even a shoot out.
I got off the bus and walked around Calgary looking for a place to sleep. Within 10 minutes I'd declared Calgary the worst city in the world. It was a Saturday morning and there was nobody around. The sole purpose of the city centre was business and car parking. Nobody seemed to live there. They all lived in the suburbs. There were tall grey or brown buildings everywhere and the streets were empty except for a few lost and homeless drunks. Most of the restaurants and cafes were closed. Their trade was during the week, serving the starving businessmen and women.
Calgary was a city of oil, big churches, big cars and cowboys. The streets were wide and the cars were twice as big as they needed to be. One person sat in a car that could hold six people comfortably. It was all excess and stupidity.
86.
Despite my misgivings I stayed for a month. I met a guy who offered me work painting. We painted a house, then we painted horse fences in the country. It was starting to get cold. We painted outside, wrapped up in warm clothing, our hands freezing. It was miserable. It was a horrible job. But wood needed to be painted and people painted it all over the world. Nobody seemed to be able to just leave things be. I like things in a state of disrepair. It feels natural. When have you ever seen a perfectly tended forest?
87.
One morning I was reading the local paper. I saw an offer for a lift to Ottawa with two girls. All they asked for was two hundred dollars for petrol. A bus would cost twice as much. It seemed a good deal. I called them up and organised to meet in a nearby restaurant.
I arrived at the restaurant and introduced myself to the girls. They were Hannah and Hannah’s aunt. Hannah was a girl with padding. She had a huge smile, big eyes, a round smooth face and her streaked bleached blond hair was pulled back in a tight greasy pony tail. She had huge breasts, and wore a white hooded sweatshirt with accompanying unflattering, shining, elasticised black trousers. Her eyes shone and she had a strange form of sexual appeal. She laughed loud and she felt good to be around. Her aunt was the opposite. She had dry, brittle shoulder length hair. Her face was wrinkled in every direction like a piece of paper taken from a bin and flattened out. She lent forward when she spoke to you, her stinking halitosis leaving you dizzy. Her body was gaunt, her skeleton looked like it wanted to jump from her skin and run away. I surmised it would be an interesting, or at least strange, 40 hour drive across Canada.
We had two cars. One was Hannah’s and the others was Hannah’s aunt’s. There were two other people that were coming along. They showed up at the restaurant. They forced horrible, fake smiles at us when they came in. It was like they were trying hold back vomit at the sight of us. They were a couple. The were alternative, pseudo hippy types. They weren’t anything new but they felt they were special.
He was a beat boxer. One of those men that make musical noises with their mouths. They stand on stage and make the sounds of other things with their mouth. On occasion it can be an impressive skill. But it’s hard to trust someone that does that.
He had short hair. Out the back of his hair two long dreadlocks hung half way down his back. I would find out later that they were made from his mothers hair and he’d had them attached to his. It looked like the hair you scoop from a blocked shower drain.
She was his biggest fan. She had shaved hair and gazed at him adoringly. She loved Ethiopian food. Which I couldn’t understand. I asked her how a country well known to have little to no food could make something edible. She looked at me with anger. I still believe a sirloin steak is better than a rat kebab.
They were table divers: people that eat food left behind by other people at restaurants. They were dumpster divers too: people that open dumpsters behind supermarkets and take the edible food out. They wanted to travel by car because they thought planes polluted the air too much. They were against waste and greed. Which was admirable.
My problem with them was that they were against other people that weren’t like them. It is healthy and normal to have contempt for the poor actions of others, but to treat them face to face as inferiors when you don't know them, is contemptible. If someone didn’t agree with them they were intolerable. They weren’t humble or self doubting. They were arrogant and rude. They were spoilt little hard headed children that I did my best to avoid the whole trip.
88.
Two days later we left Calgary and began driving across Alberta. It was as boring as Calgary. Alberta: The Dull State. Miles and miles of flat, treeless land, miles and miles of boredom. The prairies, everybody called them. Eight times separate people had said to me about the prairies, “You can watch your dog run away for days.”
And then Hannah said it to me. And when we stopped for petrol, Hannah’s aunt said it to me. Over and over again people said the same thing, never thinking, never changing, always happy to say the same thing millions of people had said before. They were even happy when they got the opportunity to say it. They had a little grin in one corner of their mouths, a gleam in their eyes, smiling at themselves for their wit. No wonder the world was getting worse.
I stared out the window with nothing to do but listen to the bad pop rap music Hannah let come out of her stereo. My eyes were bored, my ears were bored, we drove straight, straight, straight, nothing changed, like we were getting nowhere. Even the car was bored, the engine dragging itself along in tedious continuity.
We drove all day and into the night. 12 hours of tedious music and driving. We drove into the state of Saskatchewan and through Regina. I expected to hear jokes about Sasquatches going to Regina for vaginas but nobody said anything. I was relieved.
We finally stopped in somewhere near the border of Manitoba. It was an old motel with a small bar. It had two levels and there was a separate one level building to the side. It had dark brown weatherboards and a light green corrugated iron roof. It looked like the sort of place you’d murder someone in. Most out-of-the-way motels look like that. I guess it was Alfred Hitchcock that ruined their reputation.
Everybody needed a drink. Apart from the hippies. Of course they didn’t drink. They only smoked weed. Constantly. I presumed they would only drink if there was a half empty bottle on a table or in a dumpster. They had to stick to their principles, nothing could go to waste.
Hannah and Hannah’s aunt hired a room. I said I’d sleep on the floor, so did the hippies. We had empty pockets in common. When they hired the room, there were two double beds and the girls said I could have one. They seemed to like me, I was confused. Hannah and her aunt on one, me on the other, hippies on the ground. I would have preferred if the hippies were outside.
Hannah, the aunt, and I went to the bar. The bartender was a tall, thin, white boy with messy ear length dark brown hair and loose skin. He looked like a younger, more attractive Frankenstein. We ordered beers. I ordered scotch too. Down they went. We drank more. We were sat at the bar, me on the middle stool, the girls around me, when they started arguing at each other over some worthless point. They wouldn’t stop despite my protestations. They were like every other idiot with a bit of booze in them: convinced of their ideals and not willing to budge.
I walked out, went back to the room, and told the hippies how much Hannah and the aunt hated them. I said it nicely. I said it may be a good idea, just to ease the tension, if you give them the petrol money tomorrow. They nodded and looked at me sullenly, like I’d just told them they had cancer. God how I hated them. They were so weak and fake.
Thankfully the girls came back to the room drunk, apologised, and dragged me back to the bar. We had a few more drinks then I left again. They were arguing moronically. I entered the room, thought about kicking the sleeping hippies, thought better of it, jumped in my bed, put my ear plugs in and settled down warmly and comfortably.
The girls came back later, made a huge fuss and a racket, jumped on the bed, woke everyone up, annoyed the hippy fucks, and eventually passed out. I was amused and the wannabe beatniks were furious. Everything worked out well.
89.
We woke up the next morning and kept on driving. From now on out it was non stop driving to Ottawa. One driver and a sleeper, then we switch. Fast food and a lot of bad coffee. Hannah and I drove her car. There was no way I was sitting in a car with the aunt or the other two. Hannah felt the same way. We worked well together. She was a country girl, no clue, no culture, a laughing, cackling, screaming, fighting, wild, good times girl. I was just me and we got along alright.
We stopped at that god forsaken piss hole, Anthony Hawtons coffee shop, every hour or so. The aunt had a fascination, a pathetic addiction, to the place and it’s coffee. The coffee was just average coffee and the stores were abhorrent. They were all over the country. Everyone seemed to rave about the place: “It's so great, so yum!” It was a disgusting franchise that employed only mentally handicapped people, not for the chance to give them better lives through jobs and self confidence, but because they could pay them the lowest wage possible. Each time we went in there I gagged. It got to the point were I’d give Hannah the money and ask her to get me something. The coffee was important, I knew I wasn’t going to sleep for 24 hours.
So we drove. And drove. The scenery was better. Calgary and Alberta were long behind us. Hannah drove, I drove, Hannah drove, etc. We crossed into Ontario and it was amazing. The state was so beautiful you could hardly contain yourself. I didn’t want to drive, I just wanted to look. It was all trees, ancient rock formations, lakes and rivers.
I began driving again. I looked out the side view mirror and noticed a sticker on the trailer we were dragging that said: Maximum speed 80kph. I was doing 110. I pushed it to 120. Nothing happened, I figured the sticker was wrong. On we went, on and on, we had places to be.
I drove into a valley. All of a sudden we were immersed in fog. I couldn’t see a thing. Well, I could, I could see lots and lots of white. Everything was white. I could just see the road in front of the car. I slowed right down to 30kph. We tottered along for a while. It was nice driving that slow, there was no pressure, the only requirement was to stay on the road.
Then there were huge headlights and an angry grill in my rear view mirror. It looked like the headless horseman. A truck. An impatient truck. He didn’t seem to see the fog. I couldn’t see anything else. The truck pulled out next to me, accelerated, and raced off into the clouds. It was a huge truck with two trailers. I guess the driver knew no one could hurt him. I was scared the rest of the time. I kept imagining a truck coming head on towards me.
Eventually we had to stop. Both Hannah and I were exhausted. I couldn’t sleep in the car while we were driving. I’d been driving along and my eyes were flickering and closing. Hannah refused to drive. We signalled to the other car and pulled over. We drove into a back alley, put the seats right back and passed out for an hour or two. The aunt sat in her car up front, her seat back up straight, her eyes bulging from excessive coffee and the desire to escape her hideous face.
We started up again and the aunt jumped in our car. She let the hippies drive hers. She said she couldn’t bear to be with them any longer. Hannah and I weren’t getting out of our car, so the aunt got in the back. I audibly groaned. Chat, chat, chat, she went. She was one of those people that sit in the middle of the back seat and lean forward into the privileged space of the front seat passengers. One of those people that just has to be a part of everything, just has to know what you’re thinking. One of those people that can’t bear to be alone.
I turned the music up and feigned sleep. 35 hours we’d been driving. I lay with my head turned towards Hannah. The aunt lent forward, sucking like a rat on her coffee, breathing on me. The stench of her rotten teeth burned my nostrils. I grimaced, cracked the window, and turned the other way. Hannah giggled, she knew what was going on.
Eventually the car arrangement returned to normal. We were alone again and entering Ottawa. We’d been driving for 40 hours, our eyes were wild and blurry and my stomach felt solid. There was a brick of fast food in there that would take a while to decompose.
We were on the motorways and it was all the same again. People driving home from work, to work from home, off to see their friends, family or partner, off to visit their son in jail, off to hold up a bank, off to murder their wife’s secret lover. There’d be a car crash and someone would die tonight.
The houses were there too, divided into suburbs with names and streets with names, then individual houses with numbers. Everything was owned and everything was named or numbered. You’ll be hard pressed to find something unnamed in this world. Unless it’s an undiscovered mineral, particle, animal or vegetation. It’ll be named when it’s found. Most likely after the person who found it. We’re always looking for something. An answer. A better way. Anything to help us know: why?
We went to Hannah’s grandma’s house. The aunt dropped the other two off at the bus station. They didn’t say goodbye to me, I didn’t say goodbye to them. I watched them drive away with contempt.
Hannah’s grandma was a lovely old lady. She was wary of me. I was a stranger that could harm her granddaughter. I tried to calm her down with smiles and kind questions. She made us food and I did the dishes. She was a lovely old lady. We unpacked the van and hung around a while smoking cigarettes. Hannah invited me to stay at her house. I politely declined. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and be alone again.
The aunt came back and offered me a lift to a hostel in the city. I accepted. On the way we stopped at the local prison so she could see her son. I waited in the car and looked at the walls, the barbed wire, the spotlights, the bars. We lock people up like savage beasts and we expect them to come out changed. If you’ve ever seen a dog released after being caged and treated poorly for a long time, you know it doesn’t work. But it’s too hard to find a better solution, so we build more prisons and lock more people away. Like throwing away socks we can’t wash the stink out of.
The aunt dropped me at a hostel, I thanked her and walked away. My whole body relaxed. I got my room key, opened the door, had a shower and lay on the bed staring at the ceiling.
89.
I spent a couple of days walking around Ottawa. It’s the capital of Canada. There were grandiose buildings and statues, restaurants, hotels, cars, enthusiastic tourists and homeless people. The same thing as everywhere. The same problems, the same repetitiveness, the same stupidity.
90.
I phoned Hannah after two days and she drove me around the city. She had her little 4 year old daughter Casey with her. She was gorgeous and full of bubbles and questions.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Willem.”
“Why are you in my mums car?”
“Because I’m her friend.”
“Why haven’t I met you?”
“Because I’ve only just met your mum.”
“Then you can’t be a good friend.”
She was right and she was beautiful. The children say what they think. The adults aren’t allowed to say what they think, so they hold it all in then do hateful, hurtful things to other people.
We drove around Ottawa. We drove into Quebec, through the parks and down to a lake. We walked and drove for hours. It was a serene and enjoyable day.
“I wanna go to M’Dowals! I wanna go to M’Dowaals!” yelled Casey from the back seat.
“Ok, baby, I’m hungry too. We’ll go’, said Hannah.
“I wanna go now!” she cried, kicking her little seat.
“Ok, baby, we’re going now.”
“Do you wanna go what’s your name?” she asked me
“Yes I do,” I said
“I wanna go now!”
We went to that ugly restaurant that’s everywhere.
“I wanna burger! I wanna burger! And fries! And a hundred sundaes!” Casey told the cashier.
We sat around eating whilst Casey spilt everything on herself and the floor, then she went running into the playground.
Later on Hannah showed me the house she was about to rent. It was small cute brick house in the country with a fireplace and a swing out back. There was a small stream in the garden that looked like it wanted to kill Casey. Hannah was worried about it too.
All over the world there were people moving into houses, out of houses. Somehow along the way their children died by some freak accident, they got depressed, couldn’t work, couldn’t enjoy anything and eventually jump off bridges to be with their babies again..
I stayed the night at Hannah’s other grandmothers house in the country. Me, Hannah and Casey slept on a big bed. I woke up to find Casey tucked up in the warmth of the bend of my legs, her head against my upper thigh. She was gorgeous. I was frightened for her, it almost seemed unfair that she too was one day going to go out in the world and be hurt and disappointed. I hoped she would get through relatively unscathed.
At midday Hannah dropped me at the bus stop and I bought a ticket to Toronto. Hannah gave me the phone number of a friend of hers who’d kindly agreed to let me stay for a few nights. Hannah was a kind, caring, wild, fun woman that was doing her best to get by.
91.
I boarded the bus to Toronto. I had my bag, a couple of books and no idea what I was doing. I looked out the window and watched the world slowly go by. More roads and more kilometres. Life seemed strange and it was.
The bus pulled into Toronto after a few tedious hours. I got off and walked up to a phone booth. I called the number Hannah had given me. Meghan answered the phone. She had a sweet voice. She told me she’d waited around for me but I hadn’t showed so she left. She gave me directions: the subway to here, change trains, get off, get bus, get off, walk down, turn left, cross road, number 52.
I walked out of the bus station and looked for the subway. I had a small back pack on and a big bag over my shoulder. It began to rain lightly so I pulled my hood up. Two women walked past, one young and the other middle aged. I turned to them asked, “Excuse me, could you tell me where the subway station is please?”
“I’m sorry we’ve got no change for you”, the young woman said.
I’d been mistaken for a bum. They hurried past me, frightened I might attack them.
“I just wanted to know where the subway was!”, I called after them.
They kept walking. I felt miserable, ignored and hated the world.
I asked a bum where I could find a subway. He pointed it out and I gave him a couple bucks. He said, “Hey, thanks buddy”, and smiled at me.
I smiled back and felt better. It’s astonishing that desperate people can be friendlier than the comfortable. I guess they’ve got nothing else to lose, they might as well try being kind. I eventually made it to the girl’s house. I was in for a pleasant surprise.
I knocked on the door. I heard the clump, clump, clump of someone coming down the stairs. Meghan answered the door. She was gorgeous. She had light brown hair pulled into a pony tail, a kind smile and friendly eyes, she had glasses that made her look intelligent and sexy, she wore comfortable track pants, top and slippers. I was glad to be there.
“I'm Meghan,” she said.
“I'm Willem.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said.
“You too,” I said.
You too.
Meghan led me upstairs and into the lounge. On the couch sat Jennifer. She was a thin girl with reddish hair, with a strong featured attractive face, and her clothing suited her perfectly. Her eyes were shining and I could tell there was self doubt and confusion in her, which made her more appealing. Pretty girl number two. I was very happy to be there.
Meghan led me into the kitchen and I was awe struck. There stood a girl I can only describe as Cleopatra. She looked at me with large sad dark eyes, her mascara making them even more penetrating. Her hair was dark, long and shined, her skin was smooth and she smiled at me. Her body was perfect. Not to skinny or fat. A women with all the curves in the right places.
“Nice to meet you,” she said.
“You too,” I said.
I thought, holy fucking mother of god, it’s nice to meet you.
The girls were watching a TV show so I had a shower. I stood in the shower smiling and looked forward to the days ahead.
92.
I slept on the couch that night. The next couple of days I spent talking to the girls, walking with the girls and walking by myself dreaming of the girls. It was so pleasant to wake up in the morning, go to the toilet, lift the seat up, go, put the seat down, walk into the kitchen to three smiling beautiful faces.
“Good morning Willem.”
“Good morning girls.”
For the first time in a long time I actually meant good when I said it.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Four or five hours. Pretty good.”
“What are you doing to do today?”
“I don’t know. Maybe walk with one of you to university then walk around the city.”
“Sounds great.”
Yes it does, I thought, it sounds really, really, really, really great.
93.
So I’d walk with one of them to university. This day I went with my Cleopatra. She was mysterious, she was difficult to understand. Sometimes we talked freely and others it was awkward. What I liked most about her is she didn’t have to talk. She seemed cold, yet loving, callous yet caring. She was nerve racking yet enjoyable to be around. She seemed to have something in her, a nervousness, a timidity, that was offset by a fire that burning inside of her. A fire that hadn’t taken proper hold yet. You had the feeling she didn’t belong amongst the others, amongst anyone, she belonged somewhere else. You felt power coming out of her but she had yet managed to take hold of it. She knew it was there but she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to grasp it.
My Cleo and I left the house, took the bus, took the subway, and walked to her university. We walked around and waited for her class to begin. She asked if I’d like to join her in the lecture. I declined. I had never liked sitting in lectures, listening to the know everything professor and having to sit there and bear the idiotic questions of the bolder students. University had scarred me.
I strolled around the university campus whilst she went to her lecture. I bought a hotdog. Undoubtedly the hotdog stands that litter every inner city corner are the best thing about Toronto. For two dollars you can have a meal. And there are all the sauces, pickles and olives available to you on the side of the cart. To me the hotdog stands were like a generous public service.
There’s a boulevard that runs through the middle of the University of Toronto campus. Sitting on the steps anywhere you get a ongoing procession of beautiful young women. The boys would sit on the steps admiring the women. The girls would sit on the steps admiring the boys. It was a good system. My Cleopatra came out of her lecture and I was there waiting. We went home and waited for night time.
94.
Toronto’s a good city. The land lightly slopes North down towards the harbour. You always know which direction you’re facing. The streets are a grid and easy to explore. The transport system, the TTC, connects the subway lines to the buses and the street cars, you buy one ticket to ride all three. You get anywhere easy and fast.
It’s an exciting city to explore. All those train rides, street car rides, jumping on, jumping off, eating hot dogs, giving change to bums, shoulder barging people. Avoiding the street kids on Yonge Street. Trying to be invisible on Dundas East, the hookers saying ‘wanna blow job mister?’, dealers hiding their guns, selling to the users, shop keepers scared behind the counters. Walking up and down Church Street, gays and rainbows everywhere, never seen so many men on one street, like all the women are dead, half naked men on billboards and in shop windows, men holding hands, men smiling at you, you crossing the street. Heading east on Gerrard, down Jarvis, dull. Onto Queen East, sex shops, Asian stores, the bars, Queen West, Much Music, don’t care. Down to King, more shops more people, down to the waterfront, stale, stale restaurants, stale people, nice views, big houses on the other shore, back we go. Onto Yonge, into the Eaton centre, yuck, quickly out. Sit down on in the square on Yonge and Dundas and look at big screen. Down into the depths of the subway, hustling with crowds, wallet in your front pocket.
95.
It was night time and I was drinking with the girls. We were committed to getting drunk. They put on punk music and everyone danced around. I sat on the couch. They made me dance. I moved my arms and legs and felt like a fool. We drank. Cleo’s ex boyfriend came over to their house. I was jealous but didn’t care. We were drunk and we went out.
We left the house. We were on our way to a show of some variety. It was either guitar music or electronic music. None of it really mattered to me, I was never a big fan of going to these gigs, what with all the people standing around or throwing their bodies around, apparently dancing, but really just bumping into you, spilling your drink and making you mad.
To me it always felt like pathetic idolisation as they crowd gathered goggling at the lead singer who bathed in their admiration. I prefer a dark club, round tables with table cloths, a bottle or two of wine, cigarettes, a seductress in the corner bathed in soft lighting, serenading me, the rest of the crowd, a song for her ex man, a small band with a double bass, a simple drum kit and maybe a horn encouraging her angelic vocals, light applause at the end of the show, everybody warm from the wine and the beauty of her voice. That’s music. The shit we were going to was just a reason to get trashed and hopefully go home with an equally drunk person. It would be a disgusting sight. I was hoping to get trashed and go home with someone.
We left the house and took the TTC down to Queen West. There were not enough seats on the tram so Jennifer sat in my lap and Cleo on her ex boyfriends. It felt good to have her there, I wrapped my arm and around her and grasped my fingers on her hip. I looked at Cleo’s ex boyfriend sitting there smug and pasty and thought, dull, you’re dull, I hope you die.
At the club the drinking continued. The drinking always continued. Be it during the night, during the week, or over the years. Always drinking. Most people always drinking. Trying to get out, out of their lives, out of their minds. They all want a holiday.
The hours passed by. Cleo’s ex boyfriend went home. Jennifer got annihilated drunk. Eventually she couldn’t stand. I took her outside with Cleo. We looked after. She was mumbling and drooling and saying all the funny things that truly drunk people say. She wasn’t aggressive or bitter, she was cute and funny
“I lovesh shu girlsh,” she said as she sat lolling against the wall. “Ant, YOU, Vwillem, you, youre, lllovely!”
“Thanks baby,” I said as I picked her up, put her arm over my shoulder and we all jumped in a cab to go home.
We got home and I sat on the couch. Meg went to bed. Jennifer sat on the couch talking to me. It didn’t make much sense but she was fun to have around. Then she declared she was off to bed. I said good night and sat there in the dim lighting staring at the wall. I liked Toronto.
My Cleopatra walked into the room. She looked so god damn beautiful. So sensual, so poised, so appealing. She walked around the table, came around to the couch, sat on my lap, and looked at me.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” I said.
I kissed her. She kissed me back. I wasn’t sure what was happening. Maybe seeing her ex boyfriend had left her feeling empty, needy. Maybe she was drunk and horny. Maybe she liked me. Maybe it was all three and a hundred other little things that effect our decisions everyday. But it was definitely the booze that had made her so bold.
I was glad she’d done it. I suggested we go upstairs to her bedroom and she agreed. Naked, she looked better than with clothes on. She was sure of herself, with her graceful movements and little actions she guided me to do what she wanted. And I gave her that and then a bit of what I had. We fell asleep in each others arms. It felt good to be in a woman’s bed again, to wrap myself around her and to feel her shuffle her way closer to me. I was warm and happy. I lay there, my armed wrapped around this beautiful girl, eyes open, staring into the darkness, thinking of Moana.
96.
The next morning we were back to our normal, relatively awkward, unsure selves. We fooled around in the easy morning light, but without the freedom of the night before. We knew there was a body there we could have, so we took it, but we could also feel a growing distance between us, that feeling of apprehension when you have sex with someone you don’t know so well. It’s the gap between the little you know about the mind of the person and the total giving of your body to them. That gap needs to be filled. If it's not you’re left with a fear that maybe you can't trust that person and perhaps you did something wrong despite it feeling so good.
So we spent half the day together dealing with this annoying feeling. I’m sure we both wished for total ease between us, a disappearance of this awkwardness, but it didn’t come. Maybe she simply regretted it, and wanted me to disappear. So that’s what I concentrated on.
97.
I began to feel unwanted in the house. Each action the girls made I thought it was in frustration at my presence. Even a smile and a good morning I took wrong, I took it to be a fake smile and a forced good morning. I could hear them thinking, ‘why don’t you get out, why don’t you leave us alone, we’re sick of you, why don’t get your own house, does this look like a hotel to you, a brothel?’ I knew they weren’t thinking that, but I couldn’t stop it, it was like they were screaming at me to get out of their lives.
98.
Two days after sleeping with Cleopatra I awoke at six and left the house. I wrote the girls a note thanking them. They’d been good to me. I got on a bus and the subway and walked to Dundas East, the worst part of the inner city. I found a hostel and went inside, lay down on the bed and wondered what the hell was wrong with me and my life. I went for a long miserable walk, bought some wine and lay in bed reading and drinking form the bottle.
99.
The next day I went out to find a job. I found one in a small espresso bar called Wolf, near the University on Church Street. The owner hired me and I started working a trial. The manager was entertaining to watch.
He would get pissed off at his customers, laugh at them and insult them, then charm them, say goodbye, and they would all come back again. He was the best at what he did so they kept coming back. I loved it when he was rude to the customers. It felt good to watch those demanding, expectant bastards get something back.
100.
I started working there full time. I the beginning the boss watched me. As with all the other jobs, I didn’t give a damn. I did what had to be done to make things go smoothly for me and that was it. I was never stressed out. I’d get pissed off but I wouldn’t stress. Calmly I’d go about things, always doing something, always at an average pace. It was a busy place and everything got done. The manager watched in confusion. He didn’t understand how I could do it without flailing arms, without exasperation. Like I said, I didn’t give a damn as long as no one bothered me. When he left I ate the food on display.
101.
I had a job and I was living in a hostel. My prospects were average. As far as the ladder of life, I was on the second rung. A step above the unemployed men I shared my room with and two steps above a bum. It wasn’t so good.
I wanted to get out of my room. I never again wanted to share a room with other men. It was disgusting. They were disgusting. These men snorted and stunk like pigs. When I looked at them I could see them rolling in mud, their snouts happily in the air.
I began for houses to live in. The first I saw was perfect. It was clean and warm, there were two bedrooms, one which was occupied by a short, cute blond girl with a smile that suggested she liked sleeping around, the other would be mine. Of course I didn’t get that house.
The next house I saw was on Queen West, opposite the mental hospital, above a bondage sex supplies store. It looked good. I drew a picture of the place from across the road. My plan was to give it to the girls that lived there so I would impress them with how talented I was. They would immediately invite me to move in.
Their ad for a flat mate said, “We’re two lesbians that play guitar.”
It sounded suspicious, but at least they weren’t normal. I knocked on the door. One troll answered and introduced me to another. The second grasped my hand between both of hers, shaking it up and down, saying just how very nice it was to meet me. Between them they had: two protruding lower jaws, no chin, four malfunctioning eyes, one forehead, two gammy legs, one huge ass, about 9 feet total height and 160kg of body weight. They were deformed. I followed them cautiously into the lounge.
We sat down and began the question/answer routine. Job, age, home town, plans, life, facial reconstructive surgery, etc. I learnt one was an escort and the other an aspiring escort. I thought about the poor, poor, desperate men. It shouldn’t ever be that bad. Looking at them you could tell they’d had confusing childhoods.
They showed me the room. They showed me where they’d painted over the last flatmate’s drawing, the drawing he’d done in blood. I smiled and nodded and made my way to the front door.
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“You too.” they said, “We'll call you when we've made a decision.”
I rushed down the stairs and walked fast up the street, into a bar and ordered a scotch, no ice and a beer chaser. I tried to forget the last half hour.
The next day they phoned me and told me they didn’t really think I was suitable for the flat.
102.
I wasn’t having much luck with houses. No one seemed to like me. I needed to get out of the hostel because I owed them too much money.
I phoned another girl and went to see her house on King Street West. The tram took me all the way there and stopped near the front door. This is good, I thought. The house was one half of a three level house. The view was over the expressway and onto the ocean. It’s so often confusing why city planners build their major highways on the coast. It’s as if they want to destroy the best parts of their landscape.
I knocked on the door. The door opened and a huge, heavy, goofy black dog came bounding at me. I was terrified and almost ran away in fright. I stopped being a coward and said hello to the girl standing there. She was a girl of medium height, frighteningly skinny, not attractive but not ugly, with long dark wavy orange hair, plenty of freckles, a big smile, shiny hopeful, kind eyes and an enthusiastic voice that made me feel welcome. Her name was Julia. My name was Willem. We walked up the stairs.
A lot of walls were painted red which suited the place. There were lights and fans on in every room. There was stuff everywhere. Appliances, books, tables, chairs, shelves, bicycles, sewing machines, material rolls, TV’s, computers, couches, pans, pots, plates, plants, two cats and one dog.
I walked into the kitchen and two huge Jamaican boys were sitting at the table rolling joints. They said, “What up brother” and ignored me.
There were two bathrooms, four bedrooms and Julie lived there alone. The place felt good but you could feel the undercurrent of insanity in it. I was used to that sort of thing so I ignored it.
Julie talked non stop. She seemed to be on fast forward. I looked at her in amazement as she went on and on enthusiastically talking about everything. She seemed a kind hearted girl that found it hard to get people to like her. I decided to move in. If she would let me. There were three empty bedrooms, it would be difficult for her to say no without hurting my feelings.
103.
I went back to the hostel to get my things. I walked through the doors confidently and care free, I waved a little wave at the receptionist. I had been doing some work for the owner. A bit of painting, cleaning and other things. He was fake and a trickster. He was short and had a big gut. He greeted everyone with a smile and enthusiasm. He was quick witted, confident, crafty, cheap, and would turn on a man with venom the moment they did something that didn‘t benefit him. He could talk his way into and out of anything.
I owed him $400 dollars in rent. I told him I had a house, that I was moving in that night, and that I would come back the next and continue to work for him. He trusted me.
“Fine, of course,” he said, “we’ll see you tomorrow.”
In return for all the shitty things he’d done to others, I never came back.
104.
It was good having my own house. A room with a door. A room that no one else slept in. A room no one else could come into I unless invited them in. I stood at the doorway playing with the door. I opened the door: big, angry, unhappy, aggressive, unkind, bitter world. I closed the door: quiet, peaceful, happy, alone, beautiful world. I did it over and over again until I felt stupid, closed the door, and lay on the bed.
Julie had cleaned and aired the room, made the bed, installed some shelves, fluffed the pillows, then welcomed me grandly and happily to my new home. As I lay on my bed she started talking to me through the door. She said a lot, I wasn’t listening.
I stood up, opened the door. She did a little clap and hop of excitement, her eyes glowing and asked me all about my new room. She told me how happy she was to have me here, and asked if I wanted dinner, and asked if I’d met the cats, and what was I doing that night, and where is Auckland? She was annoying as all hell but she made me feel appreciated, welcomed, loved. It was good being around her, you didn‘t have to talk back. I considered buying ear plugs.
105.
I walked all over my new neighbourhood looking places for I could buy cheap food, cheap booze, cheap clothing, do my laundry cheaply, drink good coffee, sit around, all the things you’ve got to do. It was a nice area. A little scummy with plenty of good old shops and food from all over the world. I ate a Jamaican jaffle. It was a pie, but instead of a cup with a lid, a crimped sheet of pastry was folded over the suspicious contents.
I walked further and further and jumping on trams. This was a whole part of the city I hadn’t seen. I started to get lost, I was enjoying myself. I stopped in for a few beers around the place and eventually got so lost I had to take the subway back to the central city and go back to my new house the way I had originally got there the first time. I found out the next day that I’d only been just around the corner from my house. I was used to doing stupid things so it didn’t faze me.
106.
I was going to work and the months were passing by. I caught a tram then two subway trains each morning. Work was the same. It was shit and boring. I was serving people. I don’t know why I did it. The main reason was so I could eat food, drink wine and have a roof over my head. My days were all the same. All the customers faces were the same, everything they said was the same.
“Umm, I don’t know what I want. What do you think I should get?”
I would tell them to get whatever it was easiest for me to make.
“Umm, I don’t know if I want that. I think, I think, that, umm, I think that I’ll get the number four.”
“Ok”
“No, no, No! No, No, wait! I think I’ll have that thing you first suggested.”
“Ok, that’s three fifty please.”
“Umm, ok, just one second, my purse is in here somewhere, umm, wait, here it is!”
And they’d stand there smiling, waving their purse at me like a two year old proudly holding his penis.
“Ok, three fifty, umm, umm, one, one fifty, two, three, three 25, three 50. There you go!”
I would start to make the drink.
“It’s so cold out there today! I bet you’re glad to be all nice and warm in here.”
I’d smile with my lips and think, no, I would much rather not be here.
“I bet you get to meet a lot of interesting people on this job!”
“Sometimes,” I'd say thinking, never do I meet anyone interesting here, it just gets worse and worse.
“Did you see that TV show last night? It was so funny!”
I’d say nothing and they’d just keep talking and talking. Don’t their lips get tired?
“Here you go, here’s your drink,” I'd say.
“Wow, look at that! That’s amazing, your amazing, that’s amazing!”
That’s right, amazing me earning $7.50 an hour.
“Hey thanks a lot buddy! You have a great day, try not to freeze on your way home!”
And I’d stand there, my shoulders slumped, bored out of my bored mind. All the same. Same, same, same wherever I went. In Chile, learning Spanish, hoping to discover a race of people that actually talked and didn’t just repeat the same phrases day after day after day, and when I picked up a few words, all I would ever hear, everywhere I went was: Como estas? Bien, e tu? Bien, gracias, moy bien. Que te pasa?! Callette! Hello, how are you, etc.
So I gave up learning Spanish. If I’d continued it would all have ended with me having to listen to all the same things I heard in English. Everything would be twice as annoying. Boring damned people all over the boring damned world, sitting around saying the same boring thing to each other everyday, watching the same TV, breeding more boring damned children and teaching them the same thing.
So there I was: home, job, eat, sleep, job, home, eat, two days off, etc. Back to how life was meant to be. I could never get away from it. I always ended up back where I didn’t want to be. A few months went by. I started drinking heavily. It’s all you can do.
107.
Julie started going mentally downhill. Fast. Instead of talking at me all the time in her wavering excitable voice, she began spending all day in her room. Sometimes I could hear sobbing through the door. I thought, why me? I always ended up being around the crazy ones. What was it that drew me too them? Drew them to me? I seemed to have an internal disaster magnet, anyone a couple of months from break down came and found me.
The girls that lose their minds are always the ones with the most caring personalities. They usually talked too much, until they started to lose their minds, then they’d only talk in insane screaming outbursts. They’re almost always flirtatious. Which is a cover for their neediness. There’s usually a problem with a male authority figure in their childhoods. They cry a lot. And laugh a lot. And when they haven’t lost their mind, they make you feel good about yourself when you’re around them. They adore you and it gives you a certain pride. They’re simply more fun to be around than the other plain faced, demanding tramps that get in your way on the sidewalk. But when the crazies go crazy, it’s hell and you’ve got to run. There’s no helping these women, they’re like that for life.
Julie was crying all day and them coming out of her room at night, smoking bong after bong after bong, babbling away to me and mostly to herself. I could leave the room and come back and she’d still be going. It was quite a show.
108.
I’d always had a problem with the animals in the house. They liked to puke and shit indoors. One of the little cats would scratch and scratch under my door, then squeeze it’s little annoying body underneath the door way, jump on my desk and mew at the window. Usually at three or four in the morning. Other times it would simply piss on my bed when I was at work. I learnt from all this and built a barricade of wood, books and clothes at the base of my door to thwart it.
As Julie got worse and worse, so did the animals. Even the pets were depressed. They’d mope around all day, sad looks on their faces. When I’d walk into the kitchen the cat would throw up it's meal at my feet. When I woke in the morning, the dog would leave me a shit outside my door. I began to hate it in that house.
109.
Work was getting worse and worse as well. I would take the tram and hate everyone. I couldn’t even look out the window because all their stinking hot bodies fogged up the glass. Then the subway, with all it’s people walking in every direction, no sense, no flow, just drones walking straight towards the trains so they could jostle their way on, knocking me back and forth in their stupidity. The ticket clerks would growl at me. People with prams would stand politely at tram entrances and nearly every selfish prick would walk by without helping, oblivious to everything around them. The buskers made me furious, the beggars murderous, the women sick and the men disgusted. It was a difficult trip to get to work.
And then I’d arrive. My boss had the decency to only greet me with a half forced smile. We’d raise our eyebrows at each other and I’d sit on the stool thinking about death. Shortly it would be time to work and the customers would walk in and talk idiotically at me, determined to drive me to suicide. It was like a game to them, they knew if they tried hard enough, I’d do it.
“BRRRRR! It’s freezing out there! It’s lovely in here! Aren't you lucky!”
“Cold one out there today buddy!”
“This winters going to be a bad one!”
“What happened to the sun?!”
“It’s coming, I can feel it, summer’s gone for good!”
“Ohhhhhh, it’s so warm in here, I might stay forever!”
“If I was God, I’d make it summer all year round!”
If I was God I would kill you. It almost brought me to tears. Everyday the same thing, the same words. To everyone they saw. How many times did they say this? 8,9,10 times? Don’t they get bored of themselves?
Occasionally a man or woman would have the decency to politely walk up and order from me, step aside, wait quietly and patiently, take their order when I gave it to them, say thank you and leave. It happened maybe twice a day. A ratio of about one in a hundred. That’s all I had to work with. That’s all I would ever have to work with. I would only ever like one out of every hundred people. Those are bad odds. Even the worst gamblers wouldn’t bet on that. I was doomed.
110.
One day I came home. Julia was in her room. There was cat puke on the kitchen floor and an eviction notice on the table. It’s over, I thought. The phone was disconnected, there was a final notice from the gas and electricity company, the eviction notice and a nice girl upstairs crying over a world that wasn’t being kind back to her. It was hard, I didn’t understand. Julia had no one to turn too, I knew I couldn’t stick around, I’d fall apart myself. It wasn’t my problem anyway, though I wished I could help her. All she had to do was sell all her stuff. She had at least 50 grand worth of stuff in that house. She’d be fine. I had a small bag with old clothes and a few books. I was the one people should be worried about.
I decided to leave the country. I was done with Canada. The next day I would buy a ticket out. But first of all I walked down the street and bought a forty of scotch, sat by the window in my room looking at the stars, smoking and drinking myself to sleep.
111.
I went to work the next day. Somehow I got through the statements, the questions, and the day. I closed up and went to an internet café. I searched lazily for flights and when I found one that was cheap enough, I bought a one way ticket to Australia leaving the next night. I was sick of foreign countries, I wanted to be back in the South Pacific, I wanted to be somewhere I belonged. I would never belong but I wanted to be somewhere that at least resembled something that felt like a home, a place I could maybe partially belong.
As I walked towards the subway, I saw Amy. Amy worked at my work. She was a nice girl with an oily complexion, an appealing smile and eyes that gave away that she knew a hell of a lot more about the world than the giggling trollops that walked around chewing gum and twirling their hair. She was the best employee at work and she studied an environmental science. She was a kind hearted girl that wanted to save the world. She still believed we could.
I walked with Amy for a while. I told her that I was leaving the next night. She was surprised and rightly so. I was used to doing things suddenly. I always let things build up and then I exploded. People thought I was impulsive but it was the result of many days and weeks of depression.
I told her I wasn’t telling our boss. Or anyone else for that matter. That was easy, I only knew her, my boss, Julia, one other guy and the girls I’d stayed with. Nobody would really miss me so it didn’t matter.
Amy said that she’d miss me. She looked at me strangely, trying to understand and a little amused at what I was doing. Most people don’t act like I do. I guess I should’ve enjoyed how she looked at me but I was too preoccupied. We got on the subway and talked. Just as we were coming to my stop, she blurted out, “Let me take you dinner.”
I had been waiting for her to say something similar, I could see it in the way she held her head, the way she talked, and the way her eyes moved, so I agreed. We got off the train together and walked down the street. She was good to talk to, she thought about things other than herself, which is a rare and endearing quality.
We found a nice warm, dark, quiet restaurant with booth seats. It was the perfect place. We ordered drinks and food. I ordered the cheapest thing because I knew she didn’t have much money and she wouldn’t allow me to pay. We sat, ate and talked and everything was warm and good. We were about ready to leave. I could tell she didn’t want to go. She had that apprehensive, worried look in her eyes that people get when they’re unsure what they want or how to say it.
I had about 10 books I couldn’t bring with me. So I asked Amy if she would come back to mine and see if she wanted them. I wasn’t thinking about the books and neither was she. We walked down the road, talking freely, smiling and excited about the unexpected sex that was coming. I stopped and bought some wine.
We got back home. Julia was out. Out of her room and into the lounge. Out of her mind and crazier than ever. She talked and talked, drifted away and lost her thoughts, came back, followed Amy and I into my bedroom, stood around talking despite our disinterest and eventually I had to tell her that I had to talk privately to Amy about something and could she please give us some time. Julia said yes and off she went with madness quickly running up behind,
‘That’s really sad, I can see why you’re leaving’, said Amy.
‘I know’, I said. I leaned over and kissed her. She didn’t even ask about the books.
112.
The next day I was packed. I had dinner in a cheap restaurant, had a few beers, then dragged my one bag to the tram stop. I took the tram. From their I took an airport bus and then I was at Toronto airport. I passed through check in, the x-ray, the metal detector, duty free shops and on to the waiting area. I sat in my seat distressed looking at all the people walking around in circles. Watching the people going in and out of the toilets. No matter how developed technology became, no matter if we did discover time travel, people would still have to shit and piss and be hungry. I sat there wondering if I, if everyone, would ever be alright.
I sat down at a dollar-per-minute machine and sent a note to a friend. I told him I’d be in Melbourne in two days time, accounting for flight times and time zones, I’d take the bus to the city and show up at his door.
We got on the plane. There I was. Toronto airport. Going back to Melbourne. Back to where I started. I hadn’t learnt anything that’d helped me. I still felt the same. Miserable most of the time and made joyously happy by the simplest things. The little girl behind me asked her Mother why the man up front was so fat. I smiled and waited for the waitress with the drinks.
113.
I landed in Melbourne feeling good. I felt I somewhat belonged there. It was warm and there were girls with short skirts and brown legs all around me. It felt really good to be back. I had a big jacket with me, I was winter white and a little dishevelled. I looked like all the other junkies that swarm the streets of Melbourne. I was home.
I made it to my friend’s house. Three of my friends were there. They were surprised and happy to see me. There were hand shakes and man hugs with a quick chest touch and one or two back slaps. They made me feel welcome but not that welcome. My return hadn’t been as monumental an occasion as I wanted. I thought it’d be awe inspiring and they’d keep telling me how great it was to see me. I guess I was needy. I was happy when I walked in the door but by the end of the hello’s I was beginning to think they didn’t like me that much. So I went over the road, bought a box of beer, opened the duty free scotch and ciggies and everyone warmed up, they got more friendly and I started to feel better.
114.
I walked around doing nothing for a few days. I didn’t have much money left, and was wondering what to do with my life. I couldn’t think of anything so I started drinking in the early afternoon.
115.
I went back to my old work, Stop, and they gave me a job. I started working full time. It was horrible. There were girls there but they didn’t interest me. Nobody interested me. I drank all the time to make being around people bearable.
116.
One night I got as drunk as it is possible to get without passing out and went home with one of the girls. Even in my state I knew I shouldn’t do it, but my body wanted it and mind just didn’t give a shit anymore. So my legs walked for me, I followed, I ended up in bed with her, woke up the next day, threw up, went back to work. It was quite a life. When I was drunk I was having a good time and I was drunk most of the time so you could even say I was happy.
117.
One afternoon I was sitting in a corner with a friend when another friend came home.
“Are you drunk Willem?” the newly arrived friend asked me.
“When isn’t Willem drunk,” answered another friend.
A good friend sat drinking in the corner with me.
118.
I didn’t want to stay in Melbourne. It was depressing doing the same thing all over again. So I decided to go to Sydney. I started searching for a way to afford it. I decided on study. Whilst studying I could get loans, meaning I could afford to go. I never thought too far into the future, except when daydreaming, so a loan didn’t worry me.
I found a one year course in social policy. It made sense that if I thought the world was upside down that I should at least help try push it back over. So I booked the course and was accepted. The loans went through and I was ready to go. The course started in two months.
I told everyone I was going. They were used to me disappearing so they hardly responded. Some of the girls pretended to beg me not to go which made feel good. I was still going though. I booked a ticket for a couple of days later, called a friend, Stan, in Sydney, and he told me he had a room in his flat I could have.
I had goodbye drinks with a couple of people, passed out, woke up and went to the airport.
Life still wasn’t making any sense, for most people it never makes any sense. Just when everything’s coming together, just as you start to feel alright, everything falls apart again. But at least I was moving and that seemed to take some of the pressure away. It’s when you’re sitting still, doing the same thing that the problems start to come. You’re like a kettle left on the flame, eventually all your reserves evaporate, you get red hot, and burn everyone and everything around you.
119.
I arrived at Sydney airport. There were people everywhere. People flying to hundreds of cities on every continent except Africa. I went through customs, bought duty free, picked up my bags, went through declarations, didn’t get searched because I was wearing a shirt, went downstairs, bought a train ticket, went further downstairs, sat on a bench, waited for the train, got on the train, walked up the stairs, put my bag on the seat, put myself on the seat, waited for the train to leave, waited to get to Central, picked up my bag, walked down the stairs, walked into the people that didn’t let me get out before they got on, stood on the platform, put my bag down and looked all around me.
Everywhere around me people wore clothes and had fingernails. They all had cash, credit cards, shoes, belly buttons, ear wax, relatives, regrets, concerns, dreams, pasts and little tiny hairs all over their body. It was all so tiring.
Sydney looked good. It looked like every other city. It had tall buildings, parks, and people, but it felt good. It felt good to be somewhere different seeing new things.
Stan had given me directions. So I took a train to Danmore. It was hot. Sydney in the middle of summer hot. I had to walk 300 metres up a steep hill to Stan’s house at the top. There was a bottle shop at the bottom of the hill. I purchased six rewards for after the climb.
I got to the top of the hill, found the key, opened the door, put my bags down, took my shirt off, my socks off, lit a cigarette, opened a beer and sat on the porch in the shade. I was in Sydney and happy.
I drank the beers, got another 12 and waited for Stan to come home. Stan came home. Stan was enthusiastic to see me. I was enthusiastic to see him. We smiled and drank beers and made each other feel good about ourselves. We drank, reminisced, told stories, drank. Then we were drunk and went to bed.
I had a tiny room. It was the size of a double bed. I had a single bed and a small bag of clothes. Everything I needed.
120.
I started going to university. I was enthusiastic for a while. At times it was interesting and I read a lot. It felt good to maybe be heading in a direction where I wouldn’t have to be an old man working demeaning menial jobs.
Most of the lectures were hell. The lecturers were dull. They droned on and on, they seemed to have no talent for public speaking. How did these people get their jobs? Then there were the students. Some where good, the ones that sat up the back, quietly taking the occasional note and doing their best to maintain interest in the lecturer. Then there were the enthusiastic ones. The stupid ones that sat up the front with matching clothes and their mouths ready for questioning. They asked questions when the lecturer was still making his point. They couldn’t even wait. They just had to let everyone know they could think. It was so damn annoying I wanted to throw my books at them. They were the ones that studied 8 hours a day. They were the ones with no thoughts. They were the ones that became lecturers.
121.
I got a job in a bar. It was horrible. It was cheap bar frequented by morons and worked in by fools. In Australia, in New Zealand, if you work in the right place you can sometimes hold on to your self respect. They’re places that have some soul to them, the people that come in think about things other than houses and politics. The customers are usually polite and they treat you like an equal.
This wasn’t one of those places. You felt second class working there and the customers treated you so. There was no life to the place, it had no soul. The staff were either stupid or angry and often times both. But somehow I had managed to hustle and get paid well and I was just too lazy to find work elsewhere. Usually I found it difficult to get jobs because I couldn’t pretend to actually want to work there. The only good thing about the job was it was usually quiet. So I’d sit around outside smoking, drinking stolen drinks and talking to the chef.
122.
Four months passed. I was going to university everyday. Every damn day. Train, bus, walk, sit, listen, work, get infuriated, drink, go home, drink, go to bed. Everything was dull again. Everything was the same again. The same day, day after day after day.
The only solace I had were the people I lived with. Stan, his sister Kate, and a Rastafarian guy named Jaytrak. They were such beautiful people. They assimilated me right into their lives and drank with me all the time. You could see in their eyes they were a little unsure about the world too. They all seemed to doubt what they were being told, they didn’t believe the paths they were taking would lead them to any great happiness or fulfilment despite pursuing the careers that were meant to bring them security and contentment. Jaytrak was an artist studying to be an architect, Kate an beautiful dreaming artist studying to be a florist and Stan was a musician working in a marketing office. They knew there was more to life but they didn’t know how to go about finding it. Neither did I. Neither do most people. So we drank.
123.
One day whilst walking home from university I saw a tall building and thought about jumping off it. I didn’t want to, the thought of landing on the concrete terrified me, but I didn’t want to go on with a life so meaningless either. The tears came from my eyes though I didn’t feel them coming.
I went to the library to read about mental illness. I decided I had most things. I had: manic depression, schizophrenia, melancholia, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, dysthymia, narcissism and obsessive compulsive disorder. I took the symptoms, manipulated them and applied them to my life.
I decided I was insane. I booked an appointment with a doctor so I could tell him about it.
124.
The next day I went to the doctor.
“What can I do for you today?” he asked.
“I think I need help.”
“Oh yes, what’s wrong?”
“I’m unbelievably unhappy.”
“Oh yes, what’s wrong.”
“Nothing, I’m just unhappy, I feel terrible. I looked at a building yesterday and imagined jumping off it. Then I started crying. So I came and saw you.”
“Has anything bad happened in your life recently?”
“No.”
“No deaths, relationship break ups, failures?”
“No.”
“Then why are you unhappy?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me.”
“This is all very strange.”
“I know.”
“I think you need to see a psychiatrist.”
“Can I see one today?”
“No. I’ll give you a referral then you can call and make an appointment.”
“So nobody can help me today?”
“I’m not sure what we can do.”
“Can’t you tell me something?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, something. Like, why do you keep getting up in the morning?”
“I have to come here to make money so I can feed and house my family.”
“OK, but beyond all that. Why do you bother at all?”
“Because it’s the only thing to do.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
The doctor was a moron. He gave me the referral letter and I left. I even paid for the appointment. It seemed as if nobody knew anything. They just went on because that’s all there was to do. That’s it. Keep going because. I wasn’t convinced. I went home and drank myself to sleep. At least that helped.
125.
The next day I phoned the shrinks office. I tried to sound sad on the phone to ensure I’d get an appointment as soon as possible. The secretary said she had an opening in a week. I let out a quiet depressed sigh of desperation followed by a low ‘ok’ of resignation. The secretary searched again, shuffled some appointments around and found an appointment for me in two days. She was helpful.
126.
I moped around the day after dressed in black and expressing sadness in my body positioning. The problem was my flatmates still made me feel good. I liked being around them. I couldn’t help talking to them. That night they all sat around watching a TV show, giggling away with the laughter track. That made me miserable again so I went to my room. I could still her them and their damn TV.
127.
The day after I went to the shrink. It took me two trains, a bus and a long walk to get there. A little effort to prevent suicide was worth it.
I arrived at the shrinks office. It was a shared building with a number of shrinks, chiropractors, physiotherapists, paediatricians, and a podiatrist. There was one secretary and she had a lot of work. There were phones all over her desk, ringing all the time. There were people with sore backs, feet, muscles and minds demanding her attention. She was good, she was even polite when I introduced myself. She saw I was wearing black and seeing the shrink so she smiled kindly and understandingly at me. Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad. I sat down and tried to grasp the sadness of two minutes before.
I sat in the waiting room trying to guess which doctor the patients were seeing. The hunch back was off to the chiropractor, the guy in running shoes to the podiatrist, the lady with the good posture and bandage over her knee to the physio. I might be wrong. There were enough shrinks in the place for them all to have an appointment. I sat there looking sad.
The shrink called for me. I made a sad smile with my lips and sat down in his office.
“Willem Van de Kut, is it?”
I nodded.
“Ok, I’m Paul Sturnman, I’m glad you’re here today, hopefully I can help you.”
He paused. I waited.
“I have a referral here from your doctor, it says you feel depressed for no reason.”
“There are reasons, there’s just no single event.”
“I understand. What do you mean?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. I'd found another idiot. He'd told me he'd understood then he'd asked me to explain. And this is a doctor?
“What I mean is, I have reasons for being depressed but not because of one particular event. Not a death, a break up or anything similar.”
“I see.”
“Good.”
“So what is it that causes this depression?”
“Questions.”
“Questions?”
‘Yes, questions. And expectations. And people. Mostly people. People and their questions and expectations.”
“People?”
“Yeah.”
“What exactly do you mean?”
“They do, say and ask things that depress me.”
“Like what?”
“Argue about sports games. Stop in the middle of the pavement. Tell me their opinion. Ask me my opinion. That sort of thing.”
“And this depresses you?”
“Yes, terribly so.”
“What else?”
“War, computer games, new cars, incest, bestiality, shopping malls, shiny metal, new houses, road works, cattle rods, guns, marble bench tops, sunglasses, women. I can keep going.’
“No, it‘s ok. What makes you happy?”
“Empty back streets, forests, night time, day time, summer, winter, autumn, spring, the sun, the moon, rain, wine, cats, dogs, children and women.”
“I thought you said women depress you?”
“They do.”
“But they make you happy as well.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you drink a lot?”
“I drink enough for me.”
“How much is that?”
“More than other people.”
“Alcohol is a depressant you know.”
“The world is a depressant.”
“You appear to have cynical view of things.”
“Sometimes.”
“Tell me about your childhood.”
I told him. Then he asked me a series of questions relating to certain mental disorders. I responded as best I could, remembering the symptoms I had read two days before.
“What I want you do,” he said, “is keep a mood chart.”
“A what?”
“A mood chart. You document your moods and what you’re doing at the time and then we can try to find out what it is that depresses you.”
“I already know what it’ll look like.”
“What do you mean.”
“It’ll show my mood fluctuating in direct correlation with the amount of stupid people I encounter.”
“Maybe you should move to the country.”
“It’d be boring. There’d be nothing to do. I couldn’t eat or make any money.”
“You could work on a farm.”
“It sounds difficult. No, I like cities, they give me something to think about. I like being around people.”
“But you said people depressed you.”
“They do. But sometimes, very occasionally, I meet someone that makes the earth feel like heaven. All the cows and horses in the world couldn’t do that for me.”
“Either way, I’d like you to do the mood chart, it will give me an opportunity to understand you further so I can help.”
“Ok.”
“Great. Now you can book an appointment for two weeks time and I’ll look forward to seeing you then.”
“Ok.”
I walked out. He gave me a mood chart and a pamphlet called ‘Being Blue’. The booklet had a cartoon of a sad blue man on the front. It cheered me up. I paid the secretary .
The shrink had been a waste of money. He was just a chimp with a degree who read philosophers and decided they were right. He knew as little as the rest of us.

128.
I walked out the office and down the street reading the Being Blue pamphlet. It was a series of illustrated situations involving a blue man and a yellow man. Blue man was sad and yellow man was happy.
The illustrations showed everyday situations, such as whether you were happy at work or not. Blue man sat at work slumped and unhappy, whilst yellow man sat staring at his computer erect and exalted. Yellow man looked idiotic.
Another illustration showed both yellow and blue man after they'd crashed their cars. Blue man stood there slumped and unhappy, looking at the car and thinking about the bills, the insurance, and how he was going to get by on his low wage. Yellow man was out of the car, looking at the damage and smiling. Yellow man didn’t worry about the damage, he thought it was amusing. Yellow man had decided to have a positive outlook on life. That’s what the pamphlet was about, having a positive outlook. It was over simplified drivel that insulted the intelligence of anyone that read it.
None of the situations involved blue man and yellow man sitting on the floor confused and staring at the wall, thinking, “Apart from the construction and oil industries, where is all this human progress everyone talks about? All I can see is thousands of years of war, rape, poverty, hunger, genocide and greed. Despite all our 'progress', it doesn’t seem to me to be any easier to be alive now than it ever has.”
That would’ve been a good booklet.
I walked past a bin, disposed of the shrinks trash, and walked to the city to meet a friend for a beer.
I didn’t feel so bad anymore. Maybe it was seeing the shrink and realising that he, the apparent knower of everything, knew nothing either. Maybe it was the prospect of a beer with a friend. Maybe it wasn't depression and I didn't need drugs to help me. Maybe, like everyone else, my life involved an ongoing series of frighteningly unpredictable moods that we all have to deal with as best we can. Maybe I was still making up answers for a life I would never understand.