dog days

Not long after I moved into the rooming house there was a problem with the hotwater service. Out of their rooms they came: The Swine, Vladimir the Caretaker, and Bruce.

While the other tenants postulated, Bruce proposed a flashlight.

“A flashlight..?” The Swine said.

“What are we gunna do with a flashlight ?”

“Well...” Bruce said.

“We can get down on our hands and knees and see what’s going wrong in there”.

The Swine snatched the flashlight out of Bruce’s hand and threw it across the yard.

“Now, get back into your hole and don’t come out until I say so”.

His six foot four inch frame hunched over, Bruce did as he was told.

It seemed reasonable enough. Something was wrong with the hotwater service. Perhaps the pilot light was out. So get a flashlight and have a look. Try and solve the problem. The Swine was out of order, throwing Bruce's flashlight across the yard like that... If he ever did anything like that with my property, well... But The Swine hadn’t done it to me, he’d done it to Bruce. It was Bruce’s problem, not mine.

That same afternoon, I was hanging socks on the clothesline when I came across Bruce rummaging in the long grass.

“I saw what happened...” I said.

“A nasty thing to do with someone else’s property”.

Bruce did not respond.

“Yes. A real nasty thing to do..."

"If he had have thrown my flashlight across the yard like that...”

I plucked a pair of wet socks from the clothes basket.

“Can you hear me ?” I said.

“Do you want some help looking for your flashlight ?”

“No”. Bruce barked.

And that was that.

It’s always the same. Offer to help someone less fortunate than yourself and it’s never appreciated. But a person has to show some empathy. Without the power of empathy human beings would be animals. Scratching out a meagre existence the way a dog scratches for a bone. But human beings aren’t animals, we’re human beings... So I gave Bruce the benefit of the doubt and when next I saw The Swine on the doorstep studying a formguide, I challenged him over his treatment of Bruce.

“A bit rough that...” I said.

And made my way to the letterbox.

“A bit rough what..?” The Swine said.

I removed a wad of junkmail protruding from the letterbox.

“You wouldn’t treat a dog like that...”

“Dog..? ” The Swine said.

“This is a rooming house. No pets allowed. Except for that animal who lives out the front... Mongrel ought to be put down”.

(Bruce lived in a box tacked onto the veranda).

“The man’s not a bloody Golden Retriever”.

The Swine looked up from his formguide.

“Be careful sonny". He said.

“I’d stay right out of it if I were you”.

The Swine then buried his nose in his formguide and without saying another word unleashed from his throat a low pitched trembling growl.

‘Sonny’ ? Who did The Swine think he was calling ‘Sonny’ ? I was about to give The Swine a piece of my mind, a real dressing down. Instead, I went back to my room. If you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas. I was above petty minded incidents such as that.

I secured the wad of junkmail under one arm and unlocked the door to my room. I threw the junkmail on the coffee table but it slid across the brown veneer surface onto the floor. I picked it up and was about to throw it in the bin when in among the material advertising cut price sausages, home gardening and other paraphernalia I caught sight of a picture of a small dog. I can’t remember what they’re called; they’re fluffy and white, but they don’t bite. All they do is yap. Yap. Yap. Yap. It was a rough photocopy on cheap paper. There were prices, special offers and free quotes. Right at the bottom was the catchphrase:

We Will Treat Your Dog Like A Human Being

Now a dog might be Man’s Best Friend, but treating a dog like a human being was cruel to animals. I thought about calling the Animal Protection Society and making a complaint. And I would have, except I didn’t have a phone. (Who can afford to pay the bill when you’re on disability pension and haven’t worked for years ? Forced to live in a rooming house with a person like The Swine. A man who believed it was his right to treat less fortunate human beings with contempt and call them ‘Sonny’). I would have called the Animal Protection Society, but I didn’t. Instead, I threw the junkmail into a rubbish bin; except for the flyer advertising the dog grooming business. I pinned this up on a wall of my room in case I changed my mind and made a complaint. Then I lay down on my mattress, curled up and went to sleep.

A week or so went by and I made an effort to stay away from The Swine. I didn’t speak to Bruce either. The best thing for a poor boy like me to do was mind his own business. If I played my cards right and stayed out of trouble I could live a nice and easy life in the rooming house.

But the hotwater service failed once again. This time, The Swine went off his tree. He ran around the yard squealing that potatoes would sprout from his ears, that the dirt under his fingernails would be there forever and he would never be able to get them clean. Eventually, Vladimir the Caretaker came downstairs and gave The Swine a few reassuring pats on the head. But The Swine refused to listen and continued to froth at the mouth, so Vladimir threatened to evict him. On the spot. The Swine quickly settled down and Vladimir got out his spanners and screwdrivers and began trying to fix the hotwater service.

Vladimir tapped away at the pilot light mechanism with the tip of his screwdriver. Then, against the best advice of The Swine, he dismantled the pilot light. It lay sprawled on the garden path: springs and knobs, buttons and washers, copper pipe and metal housing. None of it in any particular order. Everyone had a theory as to what might have been wrong with the hotwater service. But nobody, not The Swine, not myself or Vladimir, knew how to put the pilotlight mechanism back together again. Then around one corner of the rooming house came Bruce. In his right hand he carried the same flashlight The Swine had snatched from him a week earlier and thrown into the grass.

Everyone saw Bruce coming, except The Swine.

Vladimir quickly gathered up his tools, did a complete about face, and pretended he was fertilising his chilli plants.

“Where’ya goin” ? The Swine said.

“Someone’ll have to fix the hotwater service”.

Bruce lumbered to a stop and clicked his flashlight into the ON position.

“Let’s get down and have a good look at it”.

“You...” The Swine said, as if about to blow his top.

“Moron. Idiot. Fool. You wanna get down and have a look at it, then do it”.

“Do what” ? Bruce said.

“Do it... IT...”

“It..? What do you mean, it” ?

In all the rooming houses I had lived in I had never seen another human being behave in the same way The Swine then behaved toward Bruce.

He grabbed hold of Bruce’s neck and tried to force him onto his knees. Being a huge man, Bruce just stood there; and for a while, it looked like The Swine would never shift him. Bruce did not fight back, for he didn’t have any fight in him. He just remained there, like a tree.

“Get down”. Screamed The Swine.

“Get down on your knees”.

Bruce just clicked his flashlight into the OFF position.

“What’s the matter with you” ? He enquired of The Swine.

With his face swollen like a bloodplum, The Swine began unbuckling his belt. It snapped out of his trousers and leaped into the air above his head.

“What’s the matter with me” ? The Swine half asked himself.

Bruce saw the snapping buckle and turned his back.

“It’s what’s the matter with you that’s what’s the matter with me." The Swine said. “That’s what’s the matter...”

And down came the venomous buckle across Bruce’s back.

“Get down.... Get down on your knees...”. Yelled The Swine.

The sharp buckle split the fabric of Bruce’s pink cotton shirt. He fell to the ground; partly because of the blows from the belt buckle, but also, as if he were eager to appease The Swine’s rabid commands. He pleaded and screamed, but The Swine just lashed him harder. Bruce cried and whimpered, then the poor man wet himself. But the sight and smell of urine only spurned The Swine onto greater heights.

“Cry like a dog you swine...”. He said.

I did not believe what I saw next. In the face of lashings of leather and steel and instead of protecting himself, Bruce rolled onto his back. He then stuck his hands and feet into the air, and began to yap. Bruce was a human being on his back going:

“Yap. Yap. Yap”.

And The Swine just lashed out harder with the belt buckle. This time, ripping into Bruce’s underbelly.

I still don’t understand why, but I tackled The Swine. Made a running jump and brought him to the ground. Grappled with him, tore the belt out of his hand, stood up, and was about to administer the same punishment he had unleashed upon Bruce - an almighty whipping - when a twisted cackle exploded in my throat. I whipped the belt buckle into the air and watched as The Swine rolled into a protective ball. Then, after a brief pause, released the belt from my hand and let it fall to the ground. The Swine saw his chance, jumped up and disappeared. Bruce, still with hands and feet in the air, continued to cry and whimper.

I’d spent a lot of time in rooming houses, but I’d never seen a human being act like an animal. I’d seen people who lived like animals. An elderly woman, mentally ill, who refused to wash her clothes until her skirt was so caked in dirt it became stiff around her thighs. But Bruce lying on his back in the grass, hands and feet in the air... Well, what was a person supposed to make of that ? I imagined that sometime in his past, Bruce had adopted the persona of a puppy, one that couldn’t fight back. As the years had passed and Bruce had become a man, he’d also become a dog. A big lumbering dog capable of nothing less than loving its owner to death.

And as I thought about Bruce lying on his back going:

“Yap. Yap. Yap”.

I began feeling like a dog; one with an innate pleasant personality that had tried hard to remain loyal to its master and show the world it really was a trustworthy animal. An intelligent dog capable of a career and a family. A spotted dog that one day might become a fine civic leader; its gallant chest swelling as it signed away on new housing for the homeless, or a new facility for the mentally ill. A Dalmatian, one able to ensure the general public that the trains would run on time... But in spite of all these canine aspirations my Dalmatian had somehow acquired sad eyes. Glassy brown orbs staring out the window of its room as it watched the world pass by while German Shepherds, Rottwheilers, Dobermans and even Pit Bull Terriers were idolised. Unable, then unwilling to participate, because there was no longer any room in the world for a dog staring out a window with sad brown eyes.

As the end of winter turned to early spring a plumber arrived and refitted all the knobs and screws, the washers and metal housing to the hotwater service. He then fired up the pilot light. And it seemed to me that once the residents of the rooming house could wash and keep themselves clean, our spirits picked up. I even said hello to The Swine and he grunted in return. A begrudging grunt, but a grunt all the same. The only person that hadn’t surfaced was Bruce. Nobody had seen him. Until early one morning, about 2.30 am, I was woken by the sound of snapping undergrowth in the yard. When I looked out my upstairs window I saw a flashlight wavering in the darkness.

It was some time before my eyes adjusted, but once they did I saw that the figure holding the flashlight was Bruce; naked, except for a towel wrapped around his waist. I watched through my window as he wandered around the yard, spraying his flashlight into bushes: stopping for a moment at one location, then moving on to another as if forever unsatisfied. I pulled on my jeans and boots and made my way downstairs. When I asked Bruce if everything was alright he jumped into the air.

“Can’t find it...” Bruce said.

“Find what...” ?

Bruce crashed through the shrubs and long grass

“It”. Bruce said .

“It..? What do you mean it ?”

The towel fell from his waist. There were black welts on his thighs and backside.

“The Lost Dogs Home. Can't find it..."

I was about to take Bruce’s arm and lead him back to his box on the veranda, when somewhere in the early morning night a cat unleashed a wail that sounded like the cry of a lost child.

Then Vladimir the Caretaker sparked up in the darkness.

“3.00 am in morning... What going on here” ?

“Don’t worry”. I said.

“But man is naked”.

“Don’t worry”. I repeated. “Go back to bed”.

There is something about the title of Caretaker, that when given to a human being turns a good man into an animal. Vladimir was no exception. He was also a regular attendant each Sunday at the local Russian Orthodox Church.

“But man is naked...”. Vladimir said again. “Like ape...”

Pretty soon, The Swine arrived.

He sniggered, while Vladimir tried to cover Bruce with the towel. But Bruce kept pining for the Lost Dogs Home and spraying his flashlight into the air. The dog next door began to bark. Lights came on in windows in apartments overlooking the yard, and a couple wearing red and blue silk robes emerged upon the balcony of their unit. I don’t know why, but the growl and bark of the dog next door, the way I imagined its drooling jaw snapping shut upon a hand, I don’t know why but that dog’s presence invaded my mind. The sad Dalmatian I had previously felt like became a domestic dog gone wild in the mountains on a moonlit night.

“Get inside” I shouted at the couple on the balcony.

“Both of you. Get inside now”.

Vladimir stared at me.

“Me caretaker here. Not you, me. Understand” ?

I understood alright. And as I could see so clearly, I decided the others, especially Vladimir and The Swine, also needed to acquire some understanding. So I threatened to rip Vladimir’s throat out if he continued to harangue me.

“No worry. I fix you”. Said Vladimir.

Still sniggering, The Swine began removing his belt from his trousers. But before he could raise it into the air I clipped him on the chin and he went down like a sack of potatoes.

Next morning, there was an official notice under my door explaining that I’d been evicted.

I pinned the eviction notice onto the wall of my room alongside the flyer advertising the dog grooming business. It seemed to me there were more similarities between animals and human beings than I had previously understood. A domestic animal will not attack an injured person and devour that person’s flesh. A domestic dog will slobber and lick and love a person to death. But look into the sad brown eyes of a Dalmatian and there always remains in those eyes a faint trace of the wilderness. And a person imagines they can hear a wild dog howling at the moon on a starless night as it prepares to travel thirty miles down a mountain path, enter farmland, and rip a lamb to bits for no other reason other than it likes the smell of blood. But perhaps the death of one lamb is the life of another and this is what human beings mean when we use the word ‘Survival’.

I was given a week to vacate the premises. But as I had little in the way of belongings, a suitcase, some personal bits and pieces, I left on the day the eviction notice was issued. I suspect Bruce still lives in his little box on the veranda. And I suspect The Swine continues to standover Bruce. While Vladimir the Caretaker probably attends the Russian Orthodox Church every Sunday, cleansing his stained soul after watching Bruce stumble naked around the yard while searching for The Lost Dogs Home. Yes, I suspect not a lot will have changed in that rooming house. In much the same way as not a lot has changed in the rooming house I live in now. A single room, four walls, one window, a mattress on the floor, and never any visitors. But just the other day a young man moved into the room next to mine. A young man who reminded me of myself when I'd first moved in seven years earlier. Not really a man, just a kid. All quiet, scared and watchful with sad brown eyes when I saw him staring out his window while contemplating the wilderness within - like a dog.

marie's story

A calm night, I cruise these city streets, this neon painting... Walking, hands in pockets, no purpose... I do not walk these streets for any particular purpose other than I like the way they feel... The clickety clack of my high heel shoes upon this cobblestone street... Discard these in favour of the bare sole... Comfortable again... Have heard this story before but shall tell it once more... Walk these city streets, this neon painting... And there at the foot of a stair at the rear of a dimly lit street I see Jimmy, suit pants, white shirt, a hand on each bannister... He climbs the stair, he enters the room, he is gone. For the first time the new moon has risen and I am alone again.

This present circumstance requires a past explanation... When Jimmy was a young man standing on the edge of a netball court all the girls wanted him. I watched Debbie, the way she never took her eyes off him... Eyes like telescopic sights that woman... And Nikki, a nice girl, but too easily hurt by the rumour that she had second stage gonorrhea and would be insane outside the end of the year. Yes, they all wanted Jimmy, so I had to act fast. Latched onto him one night in the Retreat Hotel... Said to him:

“You’re mine sweetie... You’re comin’ home with me”.

Bad move that... He treated me like a slag thereafter... Girls, I do decree, the age old maxim of not revealing your true intentions is still the best method for hauling in the Big Eyed Trevally.

I was smoking heaps of weed at the time. L., after screwing every guy she could get her hands on, (boy, did she show them what ‘mate’ really meant), fell in with Peter the Stripper who had just been released from jail on Supreme Court Appeal. He’d done three years for rape and came out a vicious bastard. (Jack’s brother, a screw, said they’d billysticked The Stripper in the shower cubicle when he’d dropped the soap, and this was probably true). So Peter the Stripper was with L. and he was moving some weed, which suited me because I liked a toke... And we had lots of laughs, stoned to the eyeballs on Saturday afternoons, drinking stubbies and smoking J’s before The Stripper and L. would retire to her bedroom, leaving me stoned and in deep space, forced to listen to L.’s bed squeak in between short intervals all afternoon and well into the evening.

Perhaps I was jealous or had nothing better to do but I rifled The Strippers jacket he’d left hanging over the back of a chair. There was a fat wad of cash in it; about six hundred in twenties... But I didn’t touch that. He’d have cut my throat. Heaps of grass I already had so I didn’t worry about the heads hidden in the jacket lining. But I very quickly snookered twelve strips of blotting paper in a glassine bag I found in a zip up pocket. Each strip was perforated into twenty four triangles, each with a different cartoon character. There was Donald Duck, Porky Pig and Sylvester... There was even one of Yosemite Sam. “You’re darn tootin’ rabbit”, I said to myself. I hadn’t had a decent hit of L.S.D. for years. If The Stripper and L. were going to screw the afternoon into evening then this was one trip I was not going to miss out on.

Along with the keys to Peter the Stripper’s Fairlane I pocketed the gear, had a glass of orange juice to pep up my vitamin C, then drove around to the Retreat to see my sister Jeannie, who always sat in the beer garden drinking pony’s on Saturday afternoons and who had access to the necessary apparatus for “self administration of drugs of addiction”, as the police had pointed out on a charge sheet I had acquired during an earlier drug spree resulting in a string of convictions.

I parked The Stripper’s Fairlane in a block of flats at rear of The Retreat, (the Jacks were on his tail for not reporting to the Collingwood Police Station twice a week), pushed the lounge door open and through the rear window saw my sister Jeannie holding court with a chorus of criminal felines. My eyes might have been drawn to Jeannie and thoughts of an impending date with L.S.D., but I can tell you the cobwebs parted when I saw Jimmy standing in the bar wearing a pair of white tennis shorts and drinking seven ounce glasses with Snaggles. Jimmy saw me and drunkenly raised his glass. I knew then that a heady afternoon of booze and beernuts had dismissed any and all past resistance. It was a classic case of the brain occupied drinking so the groin does all the thinking and the man in the boat might have up periscoped but I promptly dismissed Jimmy’s amorous advance and disappeared into the beer garden. His sweet face fell into his seven ounce glass before he quickly rearranged his features and rejoined the conversation.

My sister Jeannie was glad to see me and whispered that her bloke Alan had ripped off a sex toy warehouse.

“You want some freebies ?” Jeannie said.

“What’dya got ?”

“Dildos and ticklers. Duo Balls and nipple clamps. Whips, stirrups, and a variety of dirty lingerie... Not to mention erotic candlegrease for those who like a burning love”.

“Are you serious" ?

“Of course, but Alan’s going to hock the lot pretty quick. We’re having a sex party Friday afternoon. Male strippers and everything...”

“I’ll be there”, I said. “But listen, I’m after something else right this minute”.

Jeannie knocked back her pony and handed the empty glass to her friend Sheila.

“Yeah..?”

“You remember when Alan burged that pharmacy in Kew and got all those fits ?”

“What’dya want a fit for ?”

“It’s only a one off”.

“Morphine ?”

“No. L.S.D.”

“L.S.D..? You saw what that shit did to me”.

Jeannie had ended up in Larundel. Certified; six weeks.

“Yeah, but you had heaps of it over two years”.

“True... How much you got ?”

“Twelve sheets”.

“You little bitch... I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll get you a glass fit. A nice smooth Blue Lady... And a dozen picks... But only if you’ll split the gear with me. Six sheets each”.

“Nine and three”.

“No way. Six and six... Or stick it under your tongue”.

“O.K. Six and six. But I want the twelve picks”.

Sheila returned with the drinks.

“Deal. Sheila, give that pony to Marie. I’ve gotta go do the business”.

Jeannie picked up her handbag and I drank the pony. Sheila, drunk as a skunk, pulled up her top and showed off her tits to some bloke on the way to the bar. The girls all laughed. It was Saturday afternoon.

*

I sat with the girls for a while, Joy and Sissy, Katie and Sheila, drinking pony’s and smoking joints. But it all got a bit too much, what with Joy talking about her other half George about to be released from Long Bay after a ten year stint. Joy wasn’t sure how she would cope with seeing him again. But there was never any question she wouldn’t get back with him. No, that was completely out of the question... We all became a tad quiet then so I had one last toke of a juicy joint Katie had rolled and said to the girls:

“I’ve got a friend in the bar to see...”

Katie clued right in.

“You little hussy, who is he ?”

Sheila threw in her two bobs worth.

“Get him out here. I wanna show him me tits”.

I almost said Sheila’s tits might be too wrinkled for Jimmy, but quickly bit my tongue. Sheila had stabbed her fella, Kind Kevin, after he had made a crack about the stretch marks across her belly. She probably wouldn’t have said anything to me... I was Jeannie’s sister... But have no doubt, these girls would turn on you at the drop of a hat.

I said goodbye, not before asking Joy to let Jeannie know I was in the bar when she returned. Then, on my way through to the lounge, dropped into the Ladies for a widdle. Some imbecile had pissed all over the seat and the other cubicle was occupied so I cleaned the seat up before I sat down. Once this was finished I lifted my dress and pulled down my knickers then sat on the seat and listened to the sound of pee whipping one side of the toilet bowl.

I was half drunk and pretty stoned; it occurred to me - my thoughts being in a place where I had time to think - that shooting up L.S.D. was crazy. When I asked myself why, there wasn’t any reason. Just a vague hum in my head; probably the result of the pot and booze... But there was something else in me that, I don’t know... Was just sad. There wasn’t any reason for this sadness, but the place I lived in, not having my kids, my job in the shoe factory, my daddy dying in prison, it was all just, well, sad... Everything was sad... But there wasn’t any use feeling sad about everything, or else I was in danger of disappearing down the brasco. It’s amazing the thoughts you have when you’re stoned. Disappearing down a toilet bowl, can you imagine that ? A fate worse than death Jeannie would say. So, after I’d pulled up my knickers I popped a ticket from the card. Unable to wait for the syringe I placed the trip under my tongue and sucked it dry. This was the way things always went... I got sad, felt I was disappearing, got on the drugs, and disappeared anyway - but at least I was having fun doing it.

I washed my hands in the sink and was about to leave when I heard the toilet flush in the next cubicle and out came Debbie’s half sister, Gordana, in a skimpy floral dress, saw me, flicked brown hair from her face and said:

“Hello Marie... Here, listen... Have a go at this”.

In her right hand, a small plastic bottle. In her left, a cigarette filter.

“What is it ?”

“Amyl”.

“But I just dropped a trip”.

“Can you spare one for me ?”

“Yeah... Gee, that’s a nice dress...”

“Sweet, isn’t it ? Knicked it from Myers last week. They’re goin’cheap...”

“Naah. Not for me. Too short, too fat, big hips, no tits. I’d look like a fucking wagon wheel... Nice dress though...”

I gave Gordana a trip and she slipped it under her tongue, then placed a drop of amyl on the cigarette filter.

“Suit yourself. Here, get this into ya”.

I jammed the filter up one nostril, sealed the other with my finger, shut my mouth, and snorted the mixture into my system. The effect was immediate. It felt as if my head had been split in two with a meat cleaver.

“Wow, that’s sick”.

“Isn’t it ?” Gordana said.

“Quick, hold me for a bit”.

Gordana laughed, then put her arms around me. I felt the soft graze of her olive skin against my left cheek. Then the effect of the amyl was gone and I started feeling queasy, which I suspected was the beginning of a twelve hour trip into the toilet bowl, but who gives a shit ?

So I went into the bar and sat down on a stool. Billy the Punter said hello and so did Nick the Greek. (He was having a quick beer or two before he had to front up at the twenty four hour take away food joint he ran in Johnston St.). Jimmy and Snaggles were still there, but I pretended not to notice. Instead, I ordered a Kailua and milk then wandered over to Old Lily, the ‘Mother of all the Lost Kids in the World’. We had a chat for ten minutes but it was hard following exactly what Lil’ said. Her sentences spun out in threads that made the bar of the Retreat look like a video game. The trip was strong; Lily’s yellow face began turning deep blue. I tried not to let on that I was tripping, and I don’t think she suspected anything; apart from me having had a joint or two. I’d had plenty of practice at covering up the effect of drugs and was working out a plan for somehow finding an excuse to speak to Jimmy - which wasn’t easy as I had to straighten out my thoughts while also listening to remnants of Lily’s life story - when I felt a gentle touch at my elbow.

“How’re ya goin’ Marie ?”

Christ... Jimmy had caught me by surprise and I had to think quick.

“Lily’s just tellin’ me her life story. Three parts, one book. You know how it is....”

He placed his beer on the table and pulled up a stool. Lily leaned across and gave him a smoochie on the cheek.

“How are you sweetie ? I saw your mummy last week”.

“Oh yeah ?” Jimmy said: “We’re not that close really...”

“A good boy always goes and sees his mummy”.

I almost laughed as Lily trailed off into some ancient story that had nothing to do with everything. Out of respect Jimmy and I listened for five or ten minutes, nodding our heads, agreeing with everything Lily said, until her alcoholic face and paisley headscarf came together in my crazy trip and she became a sorceress spinning an evil spell around the both of us. I couldn’t take anymore and excused myself by drinking up my Kailua and milk and saying I had to get another, went to the toilet and checked my face in a mirror, thought my skin was peeling away, straightened myself out, went back into the bar, and saw Jimmy standing by the jukebox about to slip a coin into the slot.

“Lily’s a bit hard to take when she gets some steam up”.

“Yeah”. Jimmy said: “I had to tunnel out through the back door myself. Promised I’d put Dean Martin on for her...You wanna hear something ?”

“War Pigs”.

“Who sings that ?”

“Black Sabbath... I got the album. You wanna borrow it ?”

Without looking, I saw Jimmy look at me. On his face there was that hint of recognition all men experience once you let them know you’re available. I expected him to jump right in. Funny though, he quickly looked away and went back to studying the songs on the juke box. I had to set things straight; which wasn’t easy, for Jimmy’s face was becoming part of the neon display.

“I’ll bring the album in next week. But I want it back, O.K ?”

He let the coins drop, pushed the button, and with the onset of Dean Martin singing ‘That’s Amore’, selected ‘War Pigs’, then asked me what I was drinking.

“Beer”. I said: “With a shot of Green Ginger Wine”.

It was going to be a big night.

*

We sat down at a table by a window, looking out onto Johnston St. I didn’t tell him I was tripping because I was frightened he’d think I was a druggie, but soon had a strip of L.S.D. between my thumb and forefinger. He couldn’t get over the cartoon characters. Liked Porky Pig the best; before telling me to put the gear away. I should have known better and quickly did as he said.

I was tripping out; the walls screamed, slipped and skidded along the floor and fused with the ceiling. That cheshire grin of Jimmy’s I loved was up and across his face. I was Alice in Wonderland as the L.S.D. really took hold, and I slipped through a rabbit hole. The hair on Jimmy’s head stood up in a curlicue that made him look like a cartoon character. I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take but while I was drinking with Jimmy everything was alright, and we looked like having the time of our lives well into the night.

I’d been waiting for him to ask, but he hadn’t; so I asked him if he wanted a trip. I swear, I almost had to beat him off with a big stick, and was just about to do so, when in through the front door of the bar walked Peter the Stripper, jacket in a bundle under his right arm and my friend L. behind him.

He looked straight at me and I knew I was gone. I wasn’t being paranoid either. I didn’t know what to do and just hoped everything would be alright; ask L. to calm The Stripper down if he got too upset, which was likely.

She came over and said hello while The Stripper went to the bar. By the tone of her voice she didn’t know that I’d stolen The Stripper’s gear, but she quickly worked out I was on something. Jimmy, on the way up on the L.S.D., started giggling at every little incident. A fly crawled up a wall - he laughed. L.’s red bra strap slipped from her shoulder - he thought this was ridiculous. L. was about to say something when The Stripper approached, sat down uninvited, stared straight at me, and mentioned that a certain item, being twelve strips of blotting paper, had gone missing from the zip up pocket in the sleeve of his jacket.

I looked at Jimmy, Jimmy looked at L., and L. looked at me. Peter the Stripper stared at all of us; fastidiously, if I could put it that way. But before anyone said a word my sister Jeannie strolled in through the rear door, sent her fella’ Alan to the bar to get a drink, while she squeezed in between The Stripper and I. Feigning sincerity Jeannie said:

“Marie sweetie... What are you drinking ?”

Peter the Stripper grabbed my arm.

“You went through my jacket didn’t you ?”

I pulled my arm away from him.

“I don’t know what you mean”.

Jeannie looked over her shoulder toward Alan at the bar while The Stripper continued.

“You know what I’m talkin’ about. My car, the tickets...”

Alan came over with the drinks.

“Hi Al.” I said.

He didn’t take an eye off Peter the Stripper.

“Marie... What’s doin’ sweetie... Are you havin’ a drink ?”

“Yeah. I’ll just go to the loo... Won’t be a tick”.

“Goodo”. Alan said.

Then extended a hand toward The Stripper.

“Alan’s the name. We haven’t met...”

Peter the Stripper might have been a bit of a crook but Alan was serious crime. He had done time in Jika Jika before it was burnt out and they only put you in The Zoo if you were a poorly behaved animal. Richmond was his stomping ground, so up in Collingwood he was a little out of his depth. But all the rough heads in the bar looked the other way. They knew he carried a piece and wasn’t afraid of using it; (someone had given it to that big mouth Costello and dumped him in Alexander Pde. Everyone knew who, but nobody was saying anything). Meanwhile, Alan had settled down, formed a crew and turned to more profitable ways of making a living; he was now doing major burgs, along with the infrequent armed heist, but only if the job was easy pickings.

Jeannie fronted me in the loo.

“You idiot”. She said.

“What do you mean ?”

“Give us the tickets... And his car keys”.

I’d forgotten about the car and told Jeannie where it was parked.

“Now get the fuck out of here before I fucking shoot you”.

This was the best advice I’d had all afternoon.

Hopefully Jeannie would fix it up with Peter the Stripper and he’d find it in his heart to forgive me... Fat chance; in this game everyone has to pay.

It’s always the same isn’t it ? As soon as things start looking sweet between Jimmy and me, I fuck up again. Everything unravels like twine off the spool on the sewing machine at work.

I spent the weekend tripping but I didn’t shoot the L.S.D.

*

That woman’s voice. This trashy piece of cheap suburban crime. Who is she ? Who are these people that populate my waking hours ? Walk these city streets, this neon painting... Hands embedded within the pockets of my herringbone coat. The snip of a suspender belt pinching the skin in the small of my back. Along with all these characters I am just a simple braid in an endless sequence of someone else’s dream. If only I could find words... But words are not forthcoming. Once again, all that is present is her voice. That sad simple girl, full of L.S.D., out onto the streets of Collingwood...

the tar machine

home

family

mother

father

sister

brother

strap

leather strap-spray-wind-the leather strap lets fly like the tail of an angry puma-black cat-yellow eyes-her name is holly-holly stares at her surroundings from the safety of her cane basket-the black and white tiled kitchen floor is a precipice that requires the most sensuous negotiations of the four paws of a cat-even if there was a mouse dawdling along the skirting board holly would not be interested for survival is foremost in her cat’s brain-all mice can wait-there will be time to play when the job is done

inside the house seen through the yellow eyes of holly the cat-she stands-she expands both this way and that-the fur on her back like iron filings drawn to a powerful magnet secretly implanted in the ceiling-holly’s fur-it has a life of its own as it leaves her spine-a flock of fine hair scurries along the walls of this sullen room-and i-in my decrepit bed-i wake from dreams of long ago anticipating some relief-shake the sleep from my eyes-and discover for the forty thousandth time these bluestone walls and the sound of an unseen creek trickling outside-i do not rise from this mattress of straw-it is as if i must lever this body across time-and i can no longer remember whether this exacerbated cat was once a childhood pet or has always been a black and hissing figment in my mind-my hair-black as well-yet inferior to holly’s-it hangs across my face-oily-traces of grey-how long have i been in this room-did i arrive yesterday on a star descending past the moon as it streaked across the universe-no matter-these walls-the sound of that creek-and holly’s tail insinuating itself into my ear-her unclipped claws hooked into the flesh around my shoulder blades-and rip with a flourish-and rip with another-and my skin descends toward the base of my spine in curlicues that gather between the pads of holly’s paws-i once administered pain-i have spilled blood and drank it and rubbed it across my chest-created a pattern from someone else’s misery-only to have their misery become my own in this room-behind these walls-with holly on my back inside my mind tearing pieces from me-exposing the ribs of a time that seems so ancient-if only i could find words that would adequately express this sinister dream inside a mind rupturing within the remembered blood of someone else’s misery-these words i cannot find are walls to the sound of that trickling creek i imagine runs through a field on the outside of this room-daisies-sunshine-these words are so inadequate-they do not inspire-and my dream drifts back into this room-behind these walls-exhausted-i dump my body back on this bed and realise the idyllic creek outside is just the sound of metal coils contracting beneath my weight

rupture-jenkins-and yes-i run my fingers through my hair-feel the greasy touch of whiskers covered in human oil-and yes-i remember a man named jenkins-his soul split by experience-and yes-jenkins- he wore black horn-rimmed glasses like antelope horns belonging to the twisted cape of some disfigured shaman-and his stories-they were of the blackest kites swirling in a cumulonimbus sky-jenkins stories breaking his listeners bones-scooping out the marrow they believed in-replacing it with a dowel of the blackest type-until it was jenkins who was able to make his listeners fly upon recitals of his disfigured shaman's dreams-this story of green leaves turned grey-decomposed and banking up along the seams joining the walls inside this bluestone room-and jenkins-you sit here now-your grey hair in strands across your scalp-leaving the slightest freckle revealed-what is inside your head jenkins-what sits beneath that freckle-is it a manifestation of the sprinting cancer inside your body-talk to me jenkins-tell me stories from inside your room-is it like mine jenkins-or are there many rooms-one containing a kitchen table-a silver room jenkins-you are a lucky man-let me hear the story of your silver room jenkins-tell em jenkins-explain the specifications of your room-talk jenkins-i will listen-i will abide by your regulations-it is fortified with steel-your wife stands by an ironing board-her tongue extends toward you-entering your ear-you feel the sound of her tongue entering your ear and your perceptions are momentarily disfigured-a split of the soul jenkins-your wife-she has control-for it is your ear inside her mouth when she swallows-and yes jenkins-your story is one of love floating high on air clouds whipped by currents into a cumulonimbus sky-and jenkins-what has become of this thing- this globule of ectoplasm that we thinly-that we inadequately describe as a soul-is it spread amongst green fields inside the highways and streams that make up the vascularity of your interior-are you totally diseased jenkins or is this infection confined to the flesh beneath your missing ear-talk jenkins-i will listen-talk jenkins- speak-and you are silent-and i am feeble-and jenkins-we shall sleep now-and continue our disfigured dissertation when we wake

silver room-slilver lady-the lady inside the silver dances with a broom extending up her arse and out her ear-she thrashes at experience- sweeps life into a time when her mind was frozen-when sand gathered in the corners of this bluestone room-she visits me now- the lady inside-she leaves her silver room and crawls from jenkins sleeping ear-i wake-her arms and body heave and sway in front of me-inside the mountain with a thousand caves that is her torso- those ribs the ribs of the lady inside-semicircular-smooth ivory ribs- bones of experience-i want to extend my hands through her pink flesh-to visit the interior of her torso and run my fingers along those ribs-like whalebone-the lady inside-her ribs-engraved by the finest cartographer-diagrams as yet unreadable-must get closer-leave this forlorn room of broken dreams-and yes-feel the edge of my dirty fingernail trailing along the inscriptions etched into those ribs-of pathways to the sea-of men in ships-their beards flaying in the wind- of diagrams incised upon the life of the lady inside-and it is the ship that i must see-for it is the vessel that transported my father to this house of hawthorn brick-his memories-his experiences-his fantasies inscribed upon my spine-that spineless act of pissing in a gumboot for fear that your father would rip his love away from you-and yes-it is love at the core of these wretched dreams-it is love that was ripped from me in that house of hawthorn brick-at first-its doors and windows were open to the sun-that house sucked in the juice of spring-dispersed pollen along corridors that degenerated into sand and dust-now-i sit inside this bluestone room-these cold walls-these walls made from thick ice-where memories leak into the general surrounds-memories of a man named jenkins-he sleeps next to me- the freckle on his head alive with the sound of his disfigured brain turning each thought over-each memory-of the woman inside- jenkins wife-who bit off her husbands ear for fear that he would become contaminated by the goings on inside this bluestone room- these walls-the sound of incessant dripping-gaining speed- becoming a trickle-outside i hear the creek become a river as it races towards the sea-the swirling waters of the mouth of a river regurgitating its soul into the sea-come jenkins-find your feet among the grime-do not slip-struggle jenkins-take your hand away from the place that once held an ear-listen-force yourself to listen as we chip holes through these walls of ice-feel the fresh air of a future life for both of us seep into the stale degeneration of this bluestone room- sniff-taste-hear-touch a life that lies paved and spread before us- extending through green fields into the distance-a small creek running alongside us jenkins-running with us-smooth stone experiences to come jenkins-let us walk-and when we are tired we shall sleep once more

and yes jenkins-do you see the stag-its velvet covered antlers a complex of possibilities-presenting pathways jenkins-which path do we choose-it is your turn to choose jenkins-you-the man who turned up that lucky wildcard-your life jenkins-what a laugh-it always seems to rise from somewhere at the bottom of a deck-on a ship-etched into the rib bones of the woman inside-my father-jenkins-jenkins-my father-i walk with you into walls-our heads-our eyes confronting one another yet all this time those pig eyes of yours have prevented me from seeing that you jenkins-you are that father that ripped your love from me and spat it into that bluestone gutter outside that house of hawthorn brick-i love your disfigurement jenkins-want to press my fingers into the pulp beside your temple and elicit strands of love from inside the recess of your brain-a tendon of love jenkins-i suck your love through my lips-it slithers down my throat-it burns the oesophagus-i will eat your entire mind jenkins-my father-i will eat the worms in your mind and shit them back into the sea-in the hope that- in the hope-there is no hope-there is only you jenkins

nightshift

Driving through the streets of Fitzroy at night you become obsessed with streetlight and the sound of an imagined disturbance occurring in flat thirteen on the twenty fifth floor of the Brunswick St. commission flats. In daylight, there is little to see but a urine stain on a tram shelter seat. An old stiff with a grey beard named Jimmy calls to you unintelligibly from the other side of the street. You wish that you were somewhere else; perhaps wandering along a path beneath a mountain in the bush...

But no.

You are up against a brick wall. Forever waiting to be released from the pain that is synonymous with the stiff named Jimmy who sits the day out on Death Row while trams travel along gentrified Gertrude St. 

Jimmy isn’t a bad man, but he’d snip you for twenty dollars if he could. He sits in his tram shelter, one foot across a thigh, digging splinters of glass out of the soles of his bare feet. The memories emanating from the grey hair covering his scalp are all he has for company. Nobody bothers about old Jimmy, so he creates imaginary friends in order to deflect the pain circulating in his head.

Jimmy once drove a cab at night. One morning, when the encroaching daylight had washed another junkie’s brains into the gutter, he drove home and  had breakfast. While sitting at the kitchen table he saw what he believed was a worm wriggling in his buttered toast. He placed a finger in the marmalade jar and dabbed a touch of ginger in the direction of the worm’s mouth. It promptly slurped the marmalade off his finger, smiled, and in Jimmy’s mind, thanked   him for the secretion. The worm then crawled beneath his fingernail and entered his bloodstream through a crack in his skin. Jimmy quietly explained this to his mother; she blessed herself, kissed her son between the eyes, then made him a dish of pear and pineapple pieces hoping that something fruity would prepare her son for the nightshift.

After breakfast Jimmy read the Neos Cosmos. As the heat of the afternoon drew near he retired to his bedroom and studied an old high school history report. He dropped off to sleep riding the gratification obtained from reading a comment his teacher had made:

‘Jimmy is a very bright boy who does no work’.

As he dozed the worm that he believed had earlier entered his bloodstream fused with the memory of Mrs. Logan’s words until a further sentence was tacked onto the end of the history report:

‘Jimmy is a very bright boy who does no work. For punishment, he must clean up the streets’.

His mother woke him at 4.00 pm. She knocked on his bedroom door then marched into his room and checked him for dysentery. (Her husband had been killed fighting the fascists in the mountains of Northern Greece. He had been a Greek resistance fighter, who, when captured by the Italians, had been forced to sit unchecked in a cell for nine months until an Italian soldier had walked in one morning unannounced and asphyxiated the prisoner using Jimmy’s father’s own excrement. Since the knowledge of that foul act had reached Jimmy’s mother she had remained petrified by the presence of faecal matter. She sensed it everywhere: under the stairs, in the  refrigerator, hiding out surreptitiously under the model bridge Jimmy had constructed in the backyard of their home and which acted as a monument over the fish pond he had built in memory of his dead father). 

Jimmy was free of dysentery, but the worm that he believed had burrowed beneath his fingernail earlier that day had increased in size during the five hours he had been asleep. He now heard and felt Mrs. Logan’s command circulating in his arteries and forcing its message through veins, onto blood vessels; which then pumped her command into each muscle of Jimmy’s body until his arms, legs, head, toes and feet were ready to put this command to work and quote: 

‘...clean up the streets.’ 

Unquote.

Later, Jimmy sat at the kitchen table, bread crumbs clinging to the sleeve of his shirt, gazing at his features in a hand held mirror his menopausic mother had once used when plucking her eyebrows and waxing her bikini line. 

His mother entered the kitchen through a rear door with orange worry beads ensconced in her left hand and muttering ‘Hail Mary’ in unorthodox Greek; this was Jimmy's cue to hit the street. He placed the mirror on the kitchen table and dismissed the furrowed brow that now followed him through the flywire door - Jimmy unaware of its presence between his black kalimata eyes - and into Vere St. 

Outside, a local street urchin dangled the entrails of a ginger tom cat on a bamboo stick, saw Jimmy, twirled the mess several times, and released it. The entrails slapped on  the driver’s side windscreen of Jimmy’s Silver Top Holden Kingswood.

Jimmy could have murdered the child; indeed, should have murdered the child. This kid, along with all the other kids that played in Jimmy’s region, who refused to play anywhere else, was a constant reminder of his semiconscious desire to kill off ‘The Child’. If Jimmy wanted to achieve this ambition he would have to transcend himself and become a red eyed battalion of tungsten, human protein, and simple stainless steel, put together and integrated with various weaponry, some obvious, some not so, into a two tone, white hot, come as you are to the party killing machine.

The sun slithered across the roofs of houses and all its grace and splendour was lost in sawtooth alcoves and sheets of rusty corrugated iron. Jimmy held the ginger tom’s entrails in one hand while its pancreas remained lodged between the taxi’s wiper blade and windscreen. He hurled the entrails after the retreating child then lunged for the pancreas with the intention of removing it. Unluckily for Jim his intellectual faculty kicked in and he was quietly impressed by the proud pancreas’ emanating theoretical value. As the saying goes, and this is not one I would use in any other context I assure you, Jimmy was about to ‘Bust his Pooper’. 

The worm which that morning had slipped beneath Jimmy’s chipped fingernail and manoeuvred its way into his bloodstream permeated his mind. He now believed it had receded, recidivist worm that it was, into the compartment in his brain that contained traces of zinc, iron oxide, lead, sulphur and bauxite, and which had been secreted there by the monumental amount of illicitly made amphetamine Jimmy had injected in a previous attempt at killing off ‘The Child’. With worm and heavy metals in tow - and an undissolved preservative attached to a jelly crystal he had eaten as a child - Jimmy was ready to inflict harm upon the nearest pederast he could find.

The sun was completely hidden in alcoves and side streets as the nightshift began with ginger tom’s pancreas flapping insistently on the windscreen. A constant reminder to Jimmy of the fun filled days he had been forced to spend with his mother. All of which culminated in a desire to whip the blade of his paint scraper across the carotid artery of ‘The Child’. 

A voice cackled into life on the two way radio. It was Mary Kyrikilli, the depot manager’s wife. The job involved picking up an elderly couple in Surrey Hills wanting a lift to the over seventy five’s dance in Canterbury. What Jimmy heard was this:

“You have a function to fulfil at 666 Fitzroy St. St. Kilda. Be quick, for the scum is sliding off the street and receding into drains then catching the first train to outer Elsternwick. We applaud your meticulous preparations for performing the task of killing ‘The Child’. We respect your commitment to cleaning up the streets and replacing unredeemed low life with flesh powered by pink spark plugs. We recognise your brain’s ability to assimilate organic material, heavy metal, and static electricity. We admire the organism you have become Jimmy: your quilled fingers, tungsten breast plate, metal teeth, and plumber’s worm for a tongue. We implore you to unleash this flexible spike from your mouth and reach into the decadent minds of the scum who surf Fitzroy St. You are the future Jimmy... Do you read me ?”

Mary’s voice fractured into an orangutan’s outraged scream that pierced Jimmy’s skull, ramming the shears into the soft skin beside his forehead. His eyes crackled with green intensity. He pressed the cab’s accelerator to the floor, picked up the receiver, and responded to Mary’s call: 

“Clear as the night sky seen from the planet Venus”.

His cab rocketed past a sex shop in Smith St. just as its pot bellied, red moustached proprietor stepped out for a breather.

“That’s odd”. The proprietor lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

“There’s a cab without its lights on”.

Excessive exposure to the Kuma Sutra, jet propelled semen, and pink pelvic interiors pierced by nuts and bolts, wooden pegs, and surgical steel curtain rings eventually overwhelm the most sophisticated thinkers. The proprietor stepped back inside, but not before carelessly flicking his half finished cigarette into the sky - and there it remained, frozen. The city skyline wheezed while in St. Kilda, Fitzroy St. seethed with discontinuity and shallow breathing as Jimmy’s murderous thoughts sharpened the shears.

Number six hundred and sixty six Fitzroy St. was a Malaysian Hawker’s joint. The restauranteur and a Labrador-Deerhound cross he kept in a kennel in the kitchen both studied Jimmy with similar expressions when he walked into the restaurant and proclaimed he was on a mission from Mary. The restauranteur shrugged: 

“Sorry. Not on the menu here”.

Then resumed tossing squealing noodles, broccoli, and tofu in a wok. In his left ear Jimmy heard the depot manager’s wife and temporary radio operator Mary Kyrikilli. She sang a song he remembered singing in primary school. The words were unfamiliar: a jumble of disconnected nouns, verbs and present tenses, but Jimmy recognised the tune. His mother had hummed the same tune while sitting in a chair as she tried to conceal from her infant son the homesickness and accompanying despair she felt for the mountains of Northern Greece. 

Jimmy’s vision of the Labrador-Deerhound’s curling upper lip, revealing pink gristle and canines capable of inflicting a serious incision, was blurred by melancholic feelings rising through his gullet and intersecting with Mary Kyrikilli’s pursed lips whispering in his ear. The restauranteur slipped his hand beneath the dog’s frothing muzzle, grabbed its leather collar, and demanded Jimmy exit the premises post haste. Instead of ramming the shears as he had planned, Jimmy turned and stepped onto Fitzroy St. 

Next door, a fight erupted in the bar of the Prince of Wales Hotel, and spilled out over cascading chairs and tables onto the footpath. 

Jimmy became involved in the fracas. 

The bouncer, a bald headed gorilla, stomped up and down on Jimmy’s head until a member of the Scottish clan celebrating St. Andrew’s Day in the bar intervened, and hit the bouncer with a Bowlo combination that cracked the bouncer’s rib and broke his nose. 

The other Jocks drinking portergaffs at the bar broke into a chant for Glasgow singing:

“Here we go... Here we go... Here we go...”.

But their striker’s score on the bouncer was soon equalised by a door bitch well versed in Zen Do Kai, sadism, and the cultivation of azaleas. 

In retaliation, she KO’d Jimmy with a Liverpool Kiss. 

Jimmy sat cross legged amid the chaos, losing blood from his right ear, and pleading for help to find his glasses. He was unable to do so, and feeling rather discontent, until one of the Scottish celebrants finally bought him a beer.

“There you are my good man...”, said Jock to the unremitting Jimmy.

“Drink up, for you are about to meet your maker”.

He walked down Fitzroy St. dressed in his stove pipe suit. When he reached The Esplanade the sound of waves breaking on St. Kilda beach accumulated in his mind. He sat down on the dirty sand, stared across Port Phillip Bay, and saw a silhouette of the You Yang Range in the night sky. He pulled his beanie over his eyes and saw an image in his mind of a man not unlike himself. That man wore a tungsten breast plate that contained a moving image of the Serengeti Plain. Jimmy now believed that he was wearing a tungsten breastplate that contained a moving image of the Serengeti Plain. Then, in spite of the worm beneath his fingernail, and the cat entrails on the windscreen, Jimmy murdered ‘The Child’.

He had wanted to go to the milkbar and buy another ice cream, but his mother had disallowed it, so he had placed a chair beside the window in his bedroom, stood on the chair, and beat his little fists upon the pane of glass until it smashed. He had seen the ice cream stick in his mind, sailing through the sewer beneath the suburb he had grown up in, while hiding under the bed and staring at his mother’s bare legs as she tried to coax him into the open. But Jimmy had refused to come out from under the bed under any circumstance for he knew this meant a beating, so his mother had sent the straw broom under the bed in an attempt to dislodge him. He felt the scratch and tickle, the rip and sickle like feature of sharp straw upon his bare thigh. He squeezed further into a hole between the bed and the wall and slashed his elbow open on a protruding bed spring. He cried and his mother screamed, while the real culprit leant against the wall. The straw broom, diffident, composed,  quietly calculating the amount of blood the boy’s wound had sprayed upon its handle.

On the night of his breakdown Jimmy struck fourteen people on the head with an engineer’s hammer. When his cab sideswiped a telephone pole in Richmond he ripped a piece of metal from the cab’s rear door and tried to dig that worm out of his ear. A gardener found him in the Botanic Gardens at 8.30 am with the metal shard protruding from the wound in his head. The worm was nowhere to be seen, but Jimmy had mumbled something about a bloated maggot wriggling down Batman Ave. toward Flinders St. According to Jimmy, his extraterrestrial partner had boarded a train, gained six kilograms on the trip by eating leftover packets of potato chips, then alighted in Ringwood.

Jimmy was sentenced to three and a half years in jail, during which he was raped by one inmate, beaten by two, and poleaxed by a screw. Upon his release into the community he lived with a fervour only countered by the ecstasy derived from watching an Old English Sheepdog urinate against a pole. Yet Jimmy did not complain, or if he did, then it was a complaint directed inward - to that black hole he has remained in for the past twenty years.

Jimmy sucks hard on a cigarette butt. A tram stops alongside his shelter in Gertrude St. He is preoccupied with swatting flies in and around his beard, but the combined stare of the tram cuts him to the quick and he is invigorated. 

“Come ‘ere...”, Jimmy says.

He waves an alighting passenger in his direction, hoping to score a fag or some coins for a bottle of turps, but the elderly woman blows disgust at him then disappears into a Voluntary Helpers shop to do her bit for charity. Jimmy’s moment of clarity dissipates in his air of lost connections. 

I watch Jimmy from across the street, sitting in his tram shelter, one foot across a thigh. 

I am aware of a certain similarity that exists between us. 

Turpentine is not my poison, but living is.

His mother is asleep in the bedroom of her commission flat. She dreams of water sliding over rocks that cascades into a silent pool. Alongside one another Jimmy and his mother sit waiting for the Achilles Laura to sail back home to Greece. Outside, she can hear Jimmy’s voice, or another voice belonging to one of the hundreds of stiffs on Death Row, sitting in tram shelters on cold nights, sleeping beneath the All Ordinaries Index printed on daily newspapers, or simply fighting off the demon  that  is  Mary Kyrikilli emanating from a microchip Jimmy believes has been implanted in his cerebellum.

From the twenty fifth floor of the Brunswick St. commission flats there is only the night sky. The stars try and force the clouds apart but it is the clouds that contain the pain scintillating in Jimmy’s mother’s mind. She lies on her back in the dark, listening to an alarm clock, along with her son, sitting in a tram shelter in Gertrude St. He shouts obscenities that are directed at nobody in particular, yet she feels are reserved for her. She cannot go out and embrace him or invite him in for moussaka; the lights are on in Jimmy’s head but nobody’s home. He screams:

“Come ‘ere gamissou.... La, la,  la...”. 

His mother takes ear plugs from the draw beside her bed and inserts these into her ears. 

All is quiet at 3.53 am. 

This is the son she was unable to love who has returned to torment her. 

When the early birds rise the squeak they make is an expression of ornithological glee at the penetration of a starling’s beak into the green heart of a cicada. Jimmy’s mother wakes, hurries to the kitchen, and prepares a Turkish coffee.