A CHANGE IS AS GOOD AS A HOLIDAY 7 page

I got out a notebook and started writing. Tonight I had a fight with Candy. I hate that shit.

After a few minutes I heard a rustling from the bed alcove, and I knew she was sitting up again.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I cannot fucking believe it.”

“What? I’m not making any noise!”

“The light,” she said. “The light’s keeping me awake. Turn if off and come to bed.”

I was in the middle of important thoughts, and I wanted to get them out of my head and onto the paper. It seemed at that moment the only way I had of making sense of my life.

“Five minutes, give me five minutes.”

“No!”

“All right, I’ll cover the light.”

I bent the lamp down until its cone almost touched the table. A small circle of light oozed out the sides, but the warehouse was pretty dark.

“There,” I said. “There’s more light coming in from the streetlights than this. I’ve got something to write. You can’t complain about this.”

“Arsehole,” she muttered, and rolled over.

Five minutes later it was Candy again.

“The pen. I can hear the pen rustling on the paper.”

“Oh, this is ridiculous, Candy. You’re looking for an excuse!”

“Turn the light off and come to bed.”

“I’m not even discussing it anymore.”

“Turn the light off!”

“That’s it. I’m not even talking.”

“Turn the fucking light off!”

I sat, my back to Candy, and continued writing. Candy continued to snarl at me but I remained silent and tried not to listen.

Violence can be momentarily painless when there is no warning. I felt an enormous thud on the crown of my head. Glass shattered over me and I reeled forward. The pieces of a heavy glass ashtray fell at my feet. I was a little bit confused for a couple of seconds. Then the pain signals cut in.

I reached my hands to the back of my head and cut my fingers on the chunk of glass that was lodged there. I pulled out the glass and felt a stab of pure pain. There was an explosion of blood from my head. I could feel its hot flow through my hair and down my neck. All this, in its own strange way, was less cloudy than the preceding seven hours of arguing. I was in that sweet realm where drama has a resolution in violence.

I leaned forward on the couch with my hands still holding my head. I felt the blood on my wrists and in my ears. I watched it splatter on the floor. I didn’t really feel like fainting yet, but I staggered forward onto one knee. It seemed like the thing to do.

Candy was pushing a towel into my head. She was in a panic, fingers fumbling through my hair, searching for the source of the blood, her words spilling out.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God, I’m so sorry, baby, I’m so sorry.”

There really was a lot of blood.

“I think we’d better go to the hospital,” I said, acting stoic.

She had some warm water in a bowl and was trying to sponge down my head and my face and my neck, all the while trembling and smothering my forehead with kisses and saying she was sorry over and over. I kept groaning like I was losing consciousness.

I just felt relieved to be treated so nicely. So lovingly and warmly. Things would be okay for days, maybe weeks now. I just knew it.

The words came tumbling out while she mopped me. She said she’d been so angry, she just wanted to scare me. She’d wanted the ashtray to smash near me, to show how serious she was. But it was a heavy ashtray and she was a bad aim and things had gone wrong. She’d never meant to hurt me. I believed her.

We walked up to the hospital. Candy held one arm around my shoulder and pressed the towel to my head with her other hand. By this time I actually was feeling a little wobbly. But I was buoyed by the thought that there might be some good drugs in the hospital.

As it was, the emergency room doctor was sharp. I told him I was in a considerable amount of pain. Was there any chance of some morphine? He smiled gently and looked at the size of my pupils.

“I don’t think you need any morphine,” he laughed. “I don’t think you’re in a great deal of pain.”

It was worth the try. There were no hard feelings. It was a pleasant atmosphere in the emergency room at three in the morning, everyone loving and friendly.

The doctor shaved a patch of my hair. He injected a local anesthetic and sewed sixteen stitches into my scalp. He gave me a strip of Panadeine Forte and a prescription for some more tomorrow.

“Go easy on these,” he said. “Not that I really expect you to.”

We walked home slowly, arm in arm through the empty fog-filled streets. We went to bed and Candy stroked my face, and we even ended up fucking softly just before dawn.

TRUTH 2: HOW IT IS

Looking at it closely, things aren’t that good, but there are cuddles, a certain comfortable feeling in the coolness of the bed, smiles, admissions of love. And this despite the constant breaking of taboos: only the guy in the hockshop; only a brothel; only to save money; only escort work; never on the street; then on the street, but only this once. The sharing of sex. The feeling of unease, unspoken. But always a condom with the others, so that things still feel all right with us, that way. And there’s some laughter into the bargain, along with the touching. Still that intimacy. The other is only work, yeah?

It’s the middle of the day, we’re sprawled on the couch, a little bit sick, watching TV and waiting for Lester or Kojak to call back. American talk shows. Anything is more interesting than fidgeting. Then without any warning, with barely a sound but the tiniest pop! the screen shuts down to blackness. And that’s how the TV dies. From now on we can hear it but we can’t see it. We will need a new one soon—a new old black-and-white one, I mean—to stop us from going crazy.

We will need a new TV to while away the time, make out nothing’s happening, make out nothing’s wrong. In the meantime, turn up the radio, reread yesterday’s paper. The form guide. Races that are already over. See how you might have done. You’re not feeling sick, that’s only queasy. Try not to feel it. You’re not feeling it. You feel all right. You’ve got integrity. Oodles left. The fucking TV’s gone.

The weather will verify all this. The morning started fine. Then it’s hot—too fucking hot. Lester calls back at last and we get on, then relax. We browse through a bookstore, I steal a book on the Vietnam War.

You lose track of time, you know what I mean? After a few weeks, listening to the TV gets frustrating. It’s a visual medium. Finally we wrangle a replacement from Victor’s cousin for fifty bucks, a set so old that the screen seems to bulge like a bubble. Summer drags on. The air is heavy, sweet, hypnotic, hazy, like musk. Aesthetic effects suffuse the screen: on The Brady Bunch you think you see Peter Fonda in the dust. For a moment you think you’re in a Holiday Inn in West Texas, and the loose screw in the ceiling fan pops every 360 degrees, beats like a heart. The endless late-night movies you watch. Abstract tragedy. Kris Kristofferson in Cisco Pike. Robert Redford and Michael J. Pollard in Little Fauss and Big Halsy. Peter Fonda with Susan George in Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. People you never knew. Anything to avoid what’s happening: Melbourne, heroin, now.

The afternoon clouds over. The rains come, yes. But wait for what’s in store.

Winter comes around again. On the odd occasion when we take time to think about it, we are ashamed, perplexed. Nothing, it seems, has changed. The same awful struggling for money, the scars grow daily up and down our arms. It becomes harder to find veins. My arm swells; I have to take my wristwatch off.

We watch the all-night music video show. Candy is drawing. I finish a book I’ve been reading about the Crusades, then I start The Spy Who Loved Me by Eleanor Philby. But my eyes are beginning to droop. At six A.M. we watch the morning news. Soon after that we fall asleep for a few hours.

It’s good to wake up knowing there’s some dope left. It helps you sleep better. At ten o’clock the day is dark and wet. The rain bleeds down the windows. We hug in front of the heater, listening to the downpour. We take a bath together, leaving the light off. It’s dark and steamy and slowly we spread soap on each other. We dry and make tea and toast. In front of the heater we mix up and have a blast. There is nothing like the morning blast.

Adrift. At times it seems that I am floating in the beauty of docility. Pulling the needle from my arm, I succumb again and again to the luscious undertow of the infinite spaces between atoms. My arm an estuary of light in which all rivers gather.

There’s no real chronology. Things happen in units, one after the other but entirely unrelated, dislocated. Each day’s about the same. Maybe the weather differs. Or the way certain television programs do not appear on weekends.

During the night, stoned, we promise each other we are going to give up. Then in the morning we wake up sick, and the fear is overwhelming. And somehow, the first thing we have to do is score. Later we can think about our promises.

In the streets: the ugliest people in the world. I never notice them behind pinprick eyeballs. But if I’m hanging out, big panic. Now evil pulsates like a heart in the sun. Oh God, shower me with money and I will be good.

We dream of going to India, Thailand, getting properly stoned on real dope at decent prices. But we’ve never got money beyond the next hit. The high point of our life is the moment we plunge the needle. The self-perpetuating fuck. Once upon a time our bodies melted until they were a force field of sweat, the one indistinguishable from the other. Love? We fucked on the rocks at Rye Beach, she scraped her knees, I scratched my back, I tore my shirt. The bright white light of sex—exquisite. And now this.

When a fight starts, for whatever reason, pride plays a part and we keep it up, we can’t back down. Besides, we haven’t slept in two days. We fight about working, about lack of dope. Call your parents. Fuck you, I can’t do that again.

The Speed of it. Our Death Approaching. What scares me, flaring at the nostrils, is The Speed. Each breath is The Speed. There are Speeds within The Speed. The day goes slow or fast, in our greatest distress we really don’t know which.

In the end, life can be seen to be inconsequential, in the way that nothing matters on some vast evolutionary scale. But everything matters, and we know that most when life seems most horrific, when at each instant of time, all the space around us is everything there is.

Suppose this, Candy. Suppose all time was not the way it is with us. Suppose its mellifluous curves and parabolas, its contractions and contortions, the furious or sedate blood of its pulse, were of a different mathematics altogether. Or say the eye that views could view with the remoteness and the slowness of rocks growing, continents being born, galaxies roller-coasting through the universe. Imagine if we could stand above the flow of time and look down on it just as we stood on Mount Dandenong and looked down on the dots of traffic ten miles away and below.

But there is a blackness all around. We can’t imagine anything. We can’t suppose. We are trapped inside the thickest of boundaries.

GPO

Rohypnol! Jesus, the dumb things that we do. Rohypnol, get this, makes you think that everything you’re doing, you’re doing at normal speed. Which you’re not, of course. Which explains the GPO debacle.

It was after our big fight, and the stitches. Candy was getting burned out, that’s the message I got from the fight. I kind of figured I was less than a man, since Candy earned most of the money and I didn’t really pull my weight. I was being threatened with industrial action, and fair enough too. These are terrible things to discuss. It was always a nagging thing in the back of my mind, but more and more now it was like a heavy suit that I wore all the time, all the pockets filled with lead: Candy works as a prostitute, and you say you care about her. I knew I must have stunk inside my suit, but I couldn’t get it off.

I wanted to be tremendously wealthy, of course. Because wealth would mean more heroin. It’s just that prostitution was the quickest way to fast, regular money. I loved Candy. I’m sure she loved me. The question was not, “How do we go fifty-fifty?” but, “What’s the quickest way we can get one on board?”

Still, when I did something like Roger’s wallet, fuck did I feel good. It didn’t happen much. When we had fights like the ashtray fight, I didn’t feel so good.

If I worked really hard, I could get a hundred or a hundred fifty bucks a day stealing and selling books. More like eighty. A hundred fifty, that’s a pretty big day. A lot of lugging, a lot of hours. Barely enough dope for the two of us. I could almost get a real job for that kind of money. And there just weren’t enough bookstores in the whole of Melbourne to do it nonstop. You had to be cyclical with this kind of crime. Anyway, it was nothing like what Candy could earn.

We were as sick as dogs, seriously edgy and sweaty. It was a Friday afternoon. Candy said, “I just don’t care anymore. I just don’t give a fuck.” The usual stuff. “We’ll just be sick, go through it, get it over and done with.”

But I felt I was long past tricking myself into that nightmare. In my demented need, I thought if I could redeem myself in her eyes, she would come good again. I always wanted heroin, but in another way, too, I always wanted to make our love pure. Or as pure as could be.

I just had to get some money. I took some Rohypnols to ease the anxiety.

“I’m going for a walk,” I said.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Candy said.

I had no particular purpose in mind, which was never a good way to do things.

The afternoon sun was pale and weak. I was sweating beneath my overcoat, but still cold in all the shadows. It never ceased to amaze me how much I could hate the world when I wasn’t stoned. It seemed such a hostile place. And yet, get a good blast in me, and my love for humanity was abundant.

I walked through Bourke Street Mall, through the department stores, the jewelry shops. Opportunity just wasn’t presenting itself. I sat on a bench and watched people waiting for trams. I thought about handbag snatches. Not the glamour activity, but if I could get away with it, it would do. I knew the back alleys to the warehouse, the same back alleys I thought I could reach when Beefboy the cop was chasing me. I thought this time would be different, that I could get around the corner and into that door before anyone would be able to catch me.

I was lost in my thoughts of alleyways and shortcuts when I saw Candy across the street. She’d come down to look for me. You wouldn’t think that’s easy in the middle of Melbourne, but she knew I was on Rohies, so she knew I wouldn’t go far.

She came over to me. “What are you doing, you idiot?”

“Nothing, I guess.”

She knew it wasn’t a stroll to take in the sights. “Come home,” she said. “You’re not going to get any money today. Face it.”

I couldn’t face it. The thought of absence of money filled me with horror.

She sat down beside me. “You know what I’ve been thinking?” she asked. “We have to get out of this country.”

I sat dejected, my head hung low. She held my hand and continued. “The world is out there, sweetpea. We need an adventure. We deserve an adventure. We’ve got to stop using. We can do it. We can start today. We can stop using, and save some money, and go overseas. We can be there in a couple of months. Imagine Europe! We can work our way around Europe. We can start today. We really can. We can start right now. Let’s go into the post office and get the passport application forms.”

Hanging out for heroin, it was hard to believe with any conviction. But we went into the GPO. It was an old building, bluestone and pillars and all that shit. The huge main room was filled with the Friday afternoon bustle. Lines led up to the postal tellers at ornate cedar counters.

We waited in line to ask for the forms. A clock chimed 4:45, a deep single ping. Away from the main line, a teller was counting cash.

Maybe it was the lovely color of the twenties that caught my attention through the muted haze of the Rohypnols. But suddenly I realized that I could grab that money, that it could be mine, that it was a heap more than I could get from a bag snatch, and that I could still skedaddle out of the post office and up the alleys and around the corner and home before anybody could catch me.

It was a very thick wad she was counting. She’d fold every ten notes, wrap them in a thin elastic band, then add them to a thicker pile held together by a thicker elastic band. It was clear that the money was mine. I’m sure no one else in the post office was hanging out like Candy and me. It seemed a natural kind of justice, really.

We got the forms and moved away.

“Come over here,” I said.

We moved to the bench along the opposite wall, where people could fill out their forms or lick stamps or write addresses.

“That lady. Counting all that money. I’m going to get it.”

“What?”

“I’m going to grab it and run home. You go first, go now. When you get to the warehouse, leave the street door ajar.”

“You’re insane.”

“No, no. I’ll just reach across the bench. Real quick. She can’t stop me. I’ll be out the door.”

“Listen to me. You’re insane. Look at all these people.” She swept her arm across the room.

“It’ll be too quick. No one will have time to react.”

“I’m going. I’m not involved. I’m out of here. Don’t be an idiot.”

She grabbed my arm and pinched hard, trying to pull me toward the door.

“Candy, don’t worry.” I took her hand away. “I know I can do it. This is just for today. We’ll still stop. We’re going overseas. I love you, Candy.”

What the hell happens in our childhood, all that TV? I was Tarzan, off to hunt down some food for Jane. If it wasn’t for the way the Rohypnol turned my body to jelly but my spirit to steel, I would have been too nervous to believe I could do this.

But for a mad second I felt powerful.

“Five minutes,” I said. “I’ll be home with money.”

She stared at me. I tried to look earnest. She turned and walked out of the post office. Years later, when someone explained to me that insanity meant repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results, it would be this singular event I would think of—the GPO, a kind of brilliant summary of things—rather than the whole drawn-out and repetitive insanity of addiction itself.

But for now, action stations. I pretended to fill out a money order form. I glanced across the room. The teller was about thirty, a skinny lady with long red hair. She was absorbed in her counting. As I watched, she counted the last of the loose notes, folded them, and inserted them into the thick pile. She opened a drawer and the thick pile disappeared.

She wrote some figures in a ledger, then reached into the drawer and placed on the counter a new pile of loose twenties. It was about an inch thick. A fucking decent whack of busy Friday money. Mine, all mine.

I sauntered across the room. It all seemed so simple in theory. I grab the money, taking her by surprise. I’m out the door before she even screams. People chase me but I’m across the street and into the alleys already. Even the most athletic guy is fifty yards behind me as I round the final corner. I slip out of view into the door that leads up into the warehouse. I slam it shut behind me. I take the stairs six at a time. I fling the warehouse door open. Candy and I hug each other. Candy says, “You’re beautiful, I love you.” We count the money. I calm down slowly and catch my breath and watch TV and smoke cigarettes and Candy goes off to get the dope. (I have to lie low for a couple of hours.)

But now, despite the brash simplicity, I was nervous. I moved closer to the counter. I was sure I looked casual, innocuous. But when I thought, Do it now, my legs wouldn’t move. I started counting down.

Okay. In five seconds I’m going to do it. Five—four—three—two—one!

And again my legs wouldn’t move.

All right. This time. Five—four—three—two—one!

Nothing.

I looked at the clock on the wall. It was eight minutes to closing.

I sighed. It had to be done. There was no choice. I thought of the spoon, the mixing, the needle sliding into the vein.

Five—four—three—two—one!

I lunged.

By the time I realized how hard it was to move fast, my momentum was carrying me forward and it was too late to stop. I grabbed for the money with both hands.

My fingers clamped on the side of the wad. And hers clamped on her side. What the fuck was she doing? This was not in the script.

She was so strong. I watched in disbelief as our hands did a tug-of-war. She pulled in her direction and I pulled in my direction and our arms rose in the air as we fought over the money.

At the instant she screamed I gave a final almighty tug. But as I pulled hard up and away from her, my fingers squeezed down on the top and the bottom note. The rest of the money exploded in a fountain of color all over me. This was the moment where, had I been able to take stock, I would have realized that normal speed does not occur on Rohypnol. I watched the whole event in slow motion, like I was outside my body.

At the same time, as the notes fluttered around my ears and down over my shoulders, I felt a huge sense of relief, and sadness, that the thing had failed, that it was over now.

I turned my body toward the door. I hadn’t even taken a full step when I was tackled from behind, heavily. I remember feeling thick and slow, but I was grateful for the bulk of my overcoat, just like when Beefboy tackled me. In Sydney, with all that warm weather, these things would probably hurt more.

I resisted. I didn’t hit the ground. But in an instant every concerned citizen in the place joined in the show. Citizen’s arrest. Citizen’s Twister. I was hit from all angles.

I was held tight in armlocks and leg locks and neck locks. My limbs twisted in every direction. At one point I was horizontal to the floor but no part of me was actually touching it.

“All right, all right!” I tried to gurgle. I wasn’t struggling. They lowered me to the ground. My arms were wrenched behind me. There was a knee in my back. My face was scrunched into the carpet. All I could see were feet. There was a lot of puffing and panting.

The Rohypnol was really kicking in. I just wanted to go to sleep. There was a bit of a commotion about “call the police” and “I’ll get security.” It all seemed so normal now.

Two security guards came. The other men reluctantly dispersed and the guards pulled me to my feet. The whole fucking room had gone silent and everyone was looking at me. The guards held my arms really tight. I didn’t have to move my legs too hard to walk. They marched me across the vast room to the staff door beside the counter. The customers parted before us. I felt like I was a camera and they were the extras, told by the director to stare intently but move aside. I was a camera. What a nice thing that would be.

I was led into an office in the bowels of the building. They shoved me into a chair. One of the guards remained at the door.

The police came. They took one look at me and laughed.

“You look pretty pathetic,” the fat one said.

I shrugged. I was full of regret. I was not happy to see them.

“Can we trust you without handcuffs?” the fat one asked.

“Of course you can,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere in a hurry.”

“Cuff him,” he said.

I walked handcuffed and flanked through the Bourke Street Mall to the paddy wagon, and the camera thing happened again. I would do the same myself, I guess. Stare, I mean. I love a good drama. But I didn’t feel good about being Moses like that.

We went back to the station. They didn’t see me as any great threat to civilization. They were even kind enough to call it attempted theft rather than theft, since I assured them, and quite rightly, that the money was never fully in my hands.

They bailed me on my own recognizance. I didn’t know what the word meant, until the fat cop said, “It means you don’t have to pay any bail, which is good, because we know you haven’t got any and we can’t stand the sight of you.” They gave me a date to appear in court. Really, the climax was the money shower. The rest was just paperwork. It took me about four hours to get out of there. By that time even the Rohypnol wasn’t doing me any favors.

I walked through the freezing dark city, back to the warehouse. The door swung open as I trudged up the old wooden stairs. I guess at least I felt like half a man. I mean, I’d tried. But now I was seriously sick; that seemed to be the important thing.

Candy was there, really worried, and O’Brien was over too. She’d called him in a panic when I hadn’t shown after a couple of hours.

“You fucking idiot,” she said, and hugged me.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

I collapsed onto the couch.

“O’Brien is going to lend us a couple of hundred. He had a good win at the races.”

Getting arrested was a hassle, of course, but at that moment I felt the purest thrill go through my shoulder blades. I sighed and smiled.

“You’re a good friend, O’Brien,” I said. “This is really good of you.”

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“I’m serious. I’ve had a fucker of an afternoon. This is good. If you were a girl I’d say I love you.”

O’Brien laughed.

I knew the dope was coming now, to wash away the GPO, so you really could say that love, just then, was the closest thing to what I felt for O’Brien.

But even O’Brien was concerned about us.

“You guys should give up,” he suggested.

“We’re going to, soon,” I said. Or maybe Candy said it. “We’re going overseas, you know?”

DRYING OUT

It took me a long time to realize that home detox, like home-delivered food, is not the best way to do things. But of course, mostly you just learn things the hard way. There was an awful long time when I was naive. Candy too, I guess, and everyone else using in our frantic little world, which we thought was the only world there was. A black naiveté.

The problem with home detox was that it felt a little informal. This made the rules loose. You could break loose rules. What would start with the best intentions would drift into that gray area where sickness overrides everything. And there we’d go again, off and running and trying to ignore the hard fact of another failed attempt at coming down.

A few months down the track, we’d do it all again, try and stop. And each time, the using in between became more fierce, more intense. Each time, our dedication grew: use well. Avoid detoxing. Detoxing is bad. Detoxing is more unpleasant than almost anything, and anyway, detoxing doesn’t work. You always use in the end.

But then there’d be a bust or a drought or a rip-off or some evil event that would interfere with the flow of things. We’d go through the horror and panic of not having dope for twelve or twenty-four hours, and this would give us some kind of startling glimpse into the precarious nature of our dependence.

After such times, after we finally got some dope and could relax and act like—feel like—we loved each other, the bravado would course through our veins and we’d make our heroic plans to stop.

The real horror was that sometimes we’d actually commence these plans.

We were living in Port Melbourne now. Long since evicted from the warehouse. After one miserable midwinter stretch, we decided to aim for a Thursday afternoon start to a new home detox program. We stocked up on pills, a little something for every occasion—I’m talking sedation here—and the cheapest palatable alcohol short of metho that we could find, which was a few flagons of four-dollar port.

Not for the first time, Candy said, “This one’s gotta be it.”

We knew it would be a bad, hard stretch of a week.

On Thursday morning we had the last of our dope. We bundled up and went for a slow ramble down around the bay, where the empty factories gave way to windswept vacant fields, and the rusty cargo ships left on their long haul across the water to Tasmania.

Even though we were stoned, our guts were churning with sadness and fear. Mostly fear, which lots of heroin will turn into sadness, which feels like a vague nausea. It’s like how purple and green will make brown. We were scared; the thought of not having dope would make anyone scared.

We walked along past the old seamen’s mission, a derelict building we’d once broken into in search of furniture. The dirty beach began to peter out and we walked around the point through a field of industrial rubble. We sat on a rock with our backs to the city and looked across the oily water to the distant power plants at Altona.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 556