Old Poetry

I found these old poems of mine.
Very teenage. Very angst filled.
Here they are;

Blanketing Emotion

An eternity of wasteful watching,
Calamity is breeding, bleeding,
Purpose is lost and darkness contorts,
The eye of the storm is a placebo.
Skeletal emotions worn on a sleeve,
Do nothing but fracture fragility,
Broken hearts do nothing but bleed,
Blood runs almost eternally.
Where are my nightmares?
Why do I sleep in peace,
My mind is a battlefield,
A war between life and living.
See the happy creatures dance,
The music is like honey,
It covers all and sticks like glue, It almost sounds like money.
Break the chorus of the night,
Seperate their harmonies,
Raise your voice and scar the sky,
Then watch the stars go out

Dead, and broken

Break the shell off.
Shrug away the suffocating dust,
I want to breathe...I want life.
But this war that rages endlessly,
Stops me living...almost stops my life.
I want to be free of rage and hate,
But why? They keep me alive.
Love is overrated anyway.
Eventually, everyone, loses.
Inevitably. Loss.
Destroy the chains of love.
Clasp on the bindings of animosity.
Please release your grip.
You win, I give up.
My life is over and love is lost...
At least I still have hate.

Crucible Mind

A fire is growing inside of me.
I'm afraid I can not extinguish it.
It burns inside and out....
The pain doesn't end.
WHY? WHY? GO! LEAVE ME IN PEACE!
The flames lick at my every thought,
And corrupt them with their vile heat,
Unpure...Unclean...My mind is dirty,
Dirty, dirty, dirty.....
STOP!
Breath in and out....slowly.
Play with fire little one,
Set yourself ablaze,
You may try to resist but,
In the end it's useless...
The power of the fire,
Will cause you to succumb,
Then you will be just like me,
Burnt out, hollow and hopelessly lost.

The Story - Part 2

Ok guys. Whoever is reading this. Not sure if it's many or any, but anyone who is, thankyou. This is part 2 of "The Story". You may notice that the characters have names now. It was getting a little too difficult without them. So please enjoy Part 2.

The Story Part 2

Everything was leading up to that Tuesday night at basketball. The boy, let’s call him “Arr”, was freaking out. In a good way. Basketball night was “the” night. He was going to ask the girl, we’ll call her “Jay”, to be his girlfriend. It was a big deal for a 17 year old kid who had had some girlfriends in the past, but nothing overly serious. It was also a really big deal, because in his mind it would finally put to bed the rumours that he was gay. He would show them all that he was straight. He liked Jay and he knew she liked him and nobody could stop him from asking her. Well, except maybe for Arr himself. As the hours ticked by and the time for basketball got closer and closer, Arr started to worry. 

What is she doesn’t actually like me?

What if she says no?

What is she is just pretending to like me so she can say no and make me look stupid?

What if I’m not good enough?

What if I’m too ugly?

And so on. He had driven himself into a frenzy of nerves, negative thoughts and stress by the time he got to the basketball stadium. He found his friends. The best friend “Merc”, the friend who he stayed with after basketball, “Em” and his other great and close friend “Dee”. The four of the played basketball together, however they were on separate teams, so there was a good friendly rivalry. Em, Dee and Merc all knew what Arr’s intentions were for the evening and gently teased him about it.

“woo gonna ask Jay out hey?”

“Better hope she says yes!”

“Gonna fuck her tonight?”

“Fucken hell Em! Calm down. I haven’t even kissed her yet”

“Yeah but if you don’t fuck her you’re a huge pussy”

“whatever man. she has to say yes to going out with me first. Then we’ll see what happens from there”

The time spent with the boys before the game hadn’t helped to calm his nerves at all. Neither had the cigarettes they sneakily shared behind the stadium as their pre-match warm up. Arr was just heading into the stadium when he saw Jay approaching. She was with her two friends from school.  He though she looked really hot that night and he thought that she might have even put in a little extra effort to look good for him. 

“Maybe she had heard he was going to ask her out and wanted me to!”, he thought.

He decided to stay outside for a bit longer and went back and sat with his mates. They had been listening to a song earlier that he thought was funny and appropriate so he started humming it gently to try and see if his mates would start singing it. Then he could join in and it wouldn’t look suspicious. His silly plan had worked and soon Arr and his three mates were sitting around, within ear shot of Jay, singing “Girlfriend” by *NSYNC*. He could see Jay smiling and laughing so was confident his plan was working. He also fancied himself somewhat of a singer so he thought that he was turning the charm all the way up to 11.

It was finally time for basketball. He went inside the stadium and played the game. It was all a blur. He tried his hardest to score points and look cool while playing all in an effort to impress Jay. In the end the game was over and the scored didn’t even matter. After the games were finished each week, everyone would grab a ball and just start shooting baskets, hanging out and talking before they had to go home. Now was his chance. He started to walk towards Jay to ask her the big question when he was stopped by one of his sort of mates from school. He was the guy that everyone was kind of friends with, everyone knew him and he enjoyed the infamy. He stopped Arr in his tracks.

“well are you gonna ask her or what man?”

“yeah im just going to do it right now”

“Bullshit, you’re pussying out, I’ll do it for you”

“No man, I want to do it myself, just leave it”

But it was too late, he was already on his way over to Jay to ask for Arr. This couldn’t be happening, Arr thought. He wanted to do it himself, to make a good starting impression and to start off this relationship right. He had to stop…

“Hey Jay. Wanna go out with Arr?”

“Of course I do, but he should ask me”

Oh god, though Arr. Its ruined now. But Jay was still looking at him and smiling. He was standing right in front of her now and a small crowd had gathered. It’s now or never, he thought.

“Jay, um, do you maybe, um want to, um go out with, um me?”

“Yes of course I do. I’ve been waiting for you to ask for ages”, she replied.

Arr thought his heart my smash out of his chest and explode like a grenade on the floor. He was so happy and it looked like Jay was too, judging be her expression.

“You better kiss her dude” someone said in the small crowd

“I will! Fuck. Talk about pressure”

Arr and Jay left the basketball stadium hand in hand. They were like the pied piper, with a stream of adolescents following, gaggling excitedly about the newest couple. The ride for Arr and Em was waiting outside so if Arr didn’t act fast he was going to have to wait for the first kiss.

He turned to Jay and kissed her. It should have been a magical, special and amazing moment except, they rushed it.

They bashed teeth together slightly, it was a bit too sloppy and was a little awkward with an audience.

“OH GOD!” thought Arr, if I ruined this first kiss, we are doomed.

Jay turned to him and kissed him on the lips, a nice quick closed mouth kiss. And the balance was restored. He was floating again. He hugged her and said goodbye. He told her he’d see her at school tomorrow and jumped in the car with Em.

Later on, when going to bed at Em’s place he was still buzzing. 

“Oh man. I can’t believe she said yes! It’s the best”

“It was my singing that got her man” said Em.

“HAHA fuck off. Whatever dude” said Arr and he slid into the double bed ready for sleep.

Em got in the other side. When Arr stayed at Em’s place they shared a double bed cause there was no other bedding. They didn’t think it was “gay”. They were just sleeping next to each other and thought nothing more of it.

Just as Arr was about to fall asleep Em rolled over and said

“you do realise that you could be sleeping in a bed with your new girlfriend Jay right now. But instead you’re sharing a bed with a dude?”

Arr rolled over pulled the covers up and sighed.

“Fuck you man”.

The Story - Part 1

With everything that's been happening in the last few weeks, life has sort of come unstuck. I've been channeling a lot of my time and energy into exercise to keep myself occupied, but it's not quite enough. So I have started writing. I'm not sure if this is any good, I'm not sure if it means anything and I'm not sure if there is a point to it, but I need to focus my energy on something and writing this story is helping. It's rough and it's very personal but it's also something I feel I need to put into words. I hope to add more to this as I continue to write it and hopefully finish it some day. But until then here is the first part, also known as all I have done so far.

THE STORY - PART 1

It was 2002. He was 17. She was 14. They didn’t know each other and they had never met, but the first time he saw her, he knew. He knew they would be together. He felt it and so it had to be.  He had no idea what she felt or thought. They weren’t friends and they had never spoke, but he was sure there must be a connection between the two.

He had come to the school the previous year for two equally misguided and foolish reasons. The first, was for a girl. He thought he was in love with her and convinced his Mum to let him change to a new school in the middle of Year 10 so he could spend more time with her. Foolish. The second reason was to get away from his old school and the relentless bullying he suffered there. Everyday he heard, “FAGGOT!” “HOMO!” “OI GAY CUNT” and many more of the amazingly brilliant ways teenagers call someone homosexual. He was running away from something and towards something else. Maybe he thought that if he left and went to a new school where he had a girlfriend, nobody could or would call him gay again. He was wrong.

When somebody new starts at a school, everyone is instantly curious about why they are there and where they came from. Unfortunately for him, this new school contained kids from his old school as well as kids who were friends with his tormentors. Not even moving to the new school with a girlfriend was enough to rid him of this notorious and fabricated identity. It was nowhere near as bad though so he thought he would ride it out and it would eventually die down, especially because he had a girlfriend. The relationship, if it can be called that, didn’t last, but two things the girl had said to him stuck with him forever and changed his opinion of himself and of relationships. She had said “You are ok looking, but it’s not like you’re really hot or anything” and “It isn’t real love. It’s just pizza love”. He had to ask the girl to explain that one. “It means, like you know how you like pizza and its awesome sometimes, but you couldn’t really see yourself having pizza forever. You know, you would prefer steak or something”. He thought he understood what she meant.

At the time the first comment cut him deep. Every young boy has a massive ego and he was no exception, He couldn’t believe she was saying he was ugly, She wasn’t, but in his mind she was. He didn’t understand that beauty or “hotness” is subjective and he resigned himself to the fact that he was ugly and was going to be alone. Eventually he got over it. After the first girl broke up with him he was able to capitalise on the “new guy” phenomenon and had quite a few girls talking about him or chasing him. He still got called gay though.

The second comment cut deeper and still stings him today. What the girl was trying to explain, with a clumsy and ill fitting food analogy (especially since pizza is amazing and who wouldn’t want it for every meal), was that she couldn’t see herself being with him for the rest of her life. He was a pit stop, a detour, a speed hump on the road of love. He wasn’t the type of person the girl could see herself married to. The first girls love affair with “pizza” lasted only a few months.  But her love affair, this unknown girl, with whom he assumed he had a destiny, her love affair with “pizza” lasted 10 years before her tastes changed.

2002. He had spent the second half of 2001 at the new school and now he was settled in. He had mates and he was happy. Even though he didn’t have a girlfriend. It was a crappy school, in a crappy town in the centre of Victoria. The school was a microcosm of the town. It was filled with bogans, druggies, footy players, bitches, cool kids, nerds and so on. He straddled the line between nerd, smoker and cool kid. Well he thought he was cool anyway. At this point he wasn’t particularly interested in girls, he was still slightly jaded from his experience of moving to this new school and he was having fun going to parties and just trying to “pick up”. He had some success and was content with that. He’d heard about some new girl at school. Everyone was talking about how they were going to fuck her stupid or pick her up or some other stupid, teenage fantasy. He hadn’t seen her, but if all the other guys were going this stupid she must be something special to look at.

It wasn’t a particularly large school, but he still hadn’t really seen, or noticed her a few months into the year. By then he had a really good and small group of friends, which now included “her” brother. Not that he knew that at the time. Him and the brother became fast friends. He thought the brother was a great guy and really cool because he lived by himself in a house just around the corner from the school. It was perfect for wagging school, weekend hang outs or pretty much anything else. Not parents around to ruin the fun. Just constant video games and underage drinking and smoking. It was the life, or so he thought. It was around the time that he started spending a lot of time at the brothers house that he finally met her. She stayed there occasionally and would often go there after school to be picked up by her Mum.

It was just like any other day, he was strolling down the tech wing, which was in actual fact a large shed like structure which housed the technical classes offered by the school along with a few hundred lockers, when he saw a girl. She had dark hair, tight jeans and a FUBU jacket. She was walking by herself, parting the crowd as she moved. He was with his friends, but not the brother, and was transfixed. “Who is that?” he asked. “That’s his sister” said one mate pointing at the brother who was approaching. He was stunned, he had never seen a girl before that he had so instantly wanted to know, to kiss, to touch. He felt it in his head and his gut. “She’s not single man” mentioned his friend and he was shattered.

He got to know her over the next month or so as she went from one boyfriend to another. But the boy was patient and he knew that eventually she would see him as he saw her.  He heard the news that she was single and from that point forward he dedicated all of his time to spending time at the brothers house, hanging out with the girl, getting to know her and eventually getting the courage to ask her out. He even asked the brother if it was ok for him to ask the girl out. The brother was fine with it.

One night after school at the house, the boy was talking to the girl in the kitchen. She was sitting on the bench and he was standing nearby, leaning on the bench. They talked about nothing really, but the boy felt so happy just being with her and near her that when he left he was beaming. He practically skipped to the train station and caught his train home. When he got there he went to the nearest payphone and called his best friend.
“Hey man, guess what?!”
“What?”
“I want to go out with his sister. I really like her man”
“I knew you were gonna say that. I could tell for a while”
“Really? Oh well I don’t care, I like her heaps and I’m gonna ask her out at basketball”
“Cool man. Good luck”
“Thanks man, see ya later”

At school over the next few days the boy spent a little bit of time with the boy but not more than usual. The boy, his best friend and the girl all shared a maths class. Maths methods. The best friend knew how the boy felt and the boy was pretty sure the girl had an inkling, but the friend took it upon himself to really hammer the point home, in the most teenage and male of ways. On a table of four was the girl, another student, the best friend and the boy, all facing the same direction. The friend though the most witty and elegant way of bringing the two together was to throw balls of paper at the girl to get her attention. Once he had it he would point his steal ruler at the boy, as if it was him who had thrown the paper. The girl laughed, the boy felt embarrassed, but relived that the scheme had somewhat worked, and the best friend nudged and elbowed the boy.

TO CONTINUE

An Open Letter To Josh

An Open Letter to Josh

Dear Josh,

Or maybe, “Dear Drug addled scumbag inhabiting my brother’s body”.

What. The. Fuck? And once again for emphasis. Seriously. What. The. Fuck. Man? What on earth are you doing? And more importantly how do you justify it to yourself and not realise the irreparable damage you are causing, not only to your body but to all of your important and close relationships. Seriously, I would like to know. So I can also live a life without guilt. Do you even know what the word means anymore? Do you feel guilt, or remorse, or…actually do you feel anything? Cause from where I sit, the only thing it seems like you feel is the need to “get fried”, or “get loose” or whatever other bullshit fucken term you wanna use for getting absolutely fucked up on hard and illicit pharmacological substances.

Is it still fun? Cause, I gotta be honest, I would assume the shine would come off a little after a while. Hell, even I get bored of video games some times. Apparently though you don’t suffer that particular affliction. Maybe that’s the problem. “Hmm, I’m bored. I know, speed.”.

“Hmm, bored again. Better do some Ice”.

Shit man, when I get bored I just wank.

Honestly Josh, you have become a thing. You are no longer a person. People don’t talk about you like a person. You are a thing, a problem to be discussed, or solved. Only there is no solution. You’re a fucking Rubik’s cube. Ok, I know some people can solve them, but I can’t. I’ve looked at it/you from every angle I can think of and I can’t see a fix. Maybe you’re just a broken Rubik’s cube. Some fuckhead tried to pull it apart and put it back together to cheat the solution, but they lost some of the blocks, or snapped them or something.

I know that most people experiment with drugs. Some people make them a career. Some make them a lifestyle. But you have turned them into a fucking art form. And not good art. Incomprehensible, pretentious bullshit art. Art that tries to please everyone at once and by doing so pleases no one. After a big night at “Tramp” getting high on nothing but the “music”, what is the first thing you think when you wake up? How does your head feel? Your body?

Oh and by the way, can you enlighten me? You know I’m not “down with the drugs lingo”. Is “music” the name of a new pill? Like “Red Mitsubishi” or “White Diamond” or something. Or is it just a really clever attempt by you to misdirect us all and make us believe you aren’t using? I’ll let you in on a secret………..it’s not working.

I’ve been thinking back and trying to figure out how it all went so horribly wrong for you. I can’t understand the event in your life that was so horrible, that you need to forget everything all the time. I don’t know who you are any more.

As it stands, if you weren’t my brother we wouldn’t be friends. If you weren’t my brother you wouldn’t even be someone I would want to talk to. If you weren’t my brother, you would be one of the fuckwits that me and Shane and probably even you, back in the day, would have made fun of. You are a person now that I wouldn’t let in my house. If I had a baby I wouldn’t let you hold it. I wouldn’t even let you wash my car, or mow my lawn.

I will would have done anything for you. But, the only thing I see myself doing for you now is carrying you out of a church in a wooden box and putting you in the ground. I can see it clearly in my head. It would be a nice sunny day. The church would be full of friends and family, some would be crying. Most would be sad but some would be breathing a sigh of relief. I know that sounds incredibly insensitive but I’m just being honest. Finally, we would know where you are at all times. We would know that your journey towards self destruction was over.

Thinking about you getting closer and closer to death from your “mad partying” I used to get mad. Really mad. But then that passed and I started to get sad. Really, really sad. But now. When I think about the possibility of getting a call from Dad or Mum or Joel to say that you are now a corpse I think, “Man I wonder how many days off from work I’ll get”. Awful isn’t it. But I can only care for so long. I can only sit up nights wondering about you. Hoping you’ll get clean. Praying to a God I don’t believe in. I can only do it for so long until I can’t care anymore. Until I can’t carry the burden anymore and I have to let it go. This, from what I can tell is what’s happening to you a lot. You are loved by a lot of people, and they won’t stop loving you, but they will, and have started to stop caring about you and what happens to you. What’s the point when you don’t care yourself right?

I remember a night a few years ago at the Prince of Wales in Seymour, when you told me you were a heroin addict. My hear t broke. All I could think was, how did this happen? How did I let this happen? You were my little bro; still a child and I hadn’t protected you. I wrote a song for you and for a while it seemed like all was well. But over the last few years you’ve gone back down that road and never looked back.

I think about the little blonde kid with the too big glasses. Always riding his BMX, or going fishing. Remember when we built the prickle tunnels? Remember grass sliding? What happened to that kid? I remember the little kid who used to love going outside and having fun. I remember the kid who loved skateboarding and had the talent to go pretty far with it. I remember the kid who played “A Link to the Past” with me. We named out character “LeJosh” and took it in turns. I remember the little guy we used to call the Milky Bar kid. I miss that guy. But he’s pretty much gone now. I know he still exists somewhere deep down inside you, but he’s trapped. Stuck inside this prison you’ve built out of drugs. Its like, that guy I remember is caramel, covered in Carob. Nobody likes fucking Carob man. It tastes like shit and everyone knows it’s fake. But caramel is fucking awesome.

I hope you do read this letter. Forgive the rambling, incoherent nature of it; I just have a lot to say. But I do hope you read it and maybe it reaches that small part inside of you that’s still you. Maybe it makes you realise what’s happening and gets you to think about making a change. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you read this and go “Fuck you” and that’s fine too. But I get the feeling if that happens, in the not too distant future you’ll be in the ground and ruining one day a year.

One short chapter

…Wake up…

…Jack…

…Come on dude, wake up seriously…

…They’re coming…

Jack slowly opened his eyes and could make out the silhouette of his buddy Sam in the dim light of the squat.  The dust he had taken earlier still hadn’t worn off. He was still high, but was coming down and he knew it was going to be a bad day.

“Who’s coming dude?” Jack asked irritably, “Why’d you wake me? I was having the best dust-out.”

Sam was clearly distressed, but through the haze of the drugs Jack hadn’t noticed.

“They dude! THEY!” Sam was pleading with Jack to understand. Jack, sat upright, rubbed his eyes and looked around the dingy room they were in.  The squat they had chosen this time. All of the windows were poorly boarded up and sunlight filtered in through the filthy, grime covered windows. What little sunlight did penetrate the room, did not illuminate a pretty picture. Jack and Sam were in one corner on an old, musty mattress that looked as though it had served as somebody’s death bed. Old newspapers, dead insects and rodents, broken glass and various other detritus supplied the remaining décor. Jack’s mind was fogged from the dust, but slowly the reality of what Sam was telling him started to creep in.

“OH FUCK! We have to get the fuck outta here dude. Like now!” Jack jumped up and started heading for the door. Sam followed,

“No shit! Why do you think I was trying to wake you up. I told you this place wasn’t safe anymore. I told you we should find somewhere new before you dusted-off, but you, you couldn’t wait you…you fucken junkie!”

“Hey fuck you! You wanted to do it just as much as I did, so don’t get all high and mighty on me now when everything has turned to shit!” Jack took a deep calming breath, wrestling with the dust for complete control of his mind.

“Look, we’ve come closer than this before. We just need to relax. If we panic we’re fucked”.

“Ok Jack, I trust you, but if I fucken die, everytime you dust-off I am going to be haunting you and you’ll never have a good high again”. Sam was half joking, but Jack knew the threat was serious.

“Ok, ok. Here”. Jack thrust something at Sam. It was small mechanical box, no bigger than a wallet. There was no display or interface except for a big red button and a smaller green one on the side. Protruding from the top was a coiled black wire with what looked like a large hypodermic needle attached to the end.

“You know what to do” Jack said as he pulled out his own box. “Go on plug it in”. Jack lifted up his shirt to reveal a small hole to the left of his belly-button. It looked red and inflamed. Jack forced the needle into the hole and held the box in his hand, his finger hovering over the green button. He waited for Sam to do the same.

“Hurry the fuck up. They’re coming. You know it doesn’t hurt. What’s the problem?”

“ I can’t fucken do it Jack, I hate it. Shoving dust up there is one thing but this…it’s weird and wrong”.

Jack spoke matter-of factly “Listen Sam, either you do it or you die what’s it gonna be?”

“You do it” Sam pleaded.

“I told you last time that it was the last time”

“PLEASE Jack!”

A crash from downstairs cause them both to look around.

“You don’t have much time Sam, it’s now or never”.

The sound of boots on the stairs and the muffled screams of other squatters filled the small room.

“This will be the last time I promise Jack. Please just do this for me, I don’t wanna die and I just can’t jack-out by myself”

“FINE! But this is seriously the last time”

There were voices coming from downstairs now, getting closer and louder.

“Alright men, we’re here to find these dirty dust-bunnies. No fuck-ups and no corpses, we need ‘em alive”.

Jack and Sam could hear the whine of the power-cuffs powering up.

“Give it to me!” Jack said as he grabbed the box out of Sam’s hands. “Turn around”

Sam lifted up her shirt and Jack plugged her in.

“Ready. We need to do this together”. Their fingers hovered over the green buttons.

The bootsteps, voices and power-cuffs were getting louder. The sounds had reached the door. Jack mimed three fingers. Three. Two. One. Jack and Sam hit the green buttons simultaneously. The small boxes started to vibrate and grew rapidly hotter, until they were almost too hot to hold. Sam had a pained look on her face as she struggled to keep hold of the box as it grew hotter and hotter in her hand. Jack grabbed Sam’s free hand and whispered something to her, she gave him a weak smile and steeled herself. They both knew that any second the Harvest soldiers would break the door down and come for them, they just needed a few more seconds. The heat from the boxes travelled up the coils, through the needles and into Jack and Sam’s bodies.

“Here we go again” Jack said through gritted teeth. The soldiers had started trying to break down the door. Again and again they bashed against it steadily weakening it.

“HOLD ON SAM! It’s happening!”. The heat from the boxes had now enveloped Sam and Jack’s entire bodies and was flowing through the whole of their beings and their joined hands. The soldiers finally broke down the door power-cuffs in hand.

“GRAB THEM! DON’T LET THEM JACK-OUT!” The lead soldier was determined not to let Sam and Jack slip away again. The soldiers readied their power-cuffs and took aim.

“NOW!” Jack shouted, and he and Sam hit their red buttons.

“NO!” screamed the lead soldier, as Jack and Sam appeared to vaporise in front of his very eyes.

“FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. SHIT!”, the soldier shouted as he tried to tear the room apart with his bare hands. “Let’s go”.

As the Harvest soldiers slowly filed out of the room, the lead soldier stayed behind for a few seconds and stared at the scorched floor where Sam and Jack had stood moments before. He turned with a snarl and followed his men into the stairwell.  Dozens of junkies hovered a few feet above the floor, ensnared in the field generated by the power-cuffs. A small amount of distortion appeared to shroud the captured junkies. What appeared to be a small bolt of lighting extended from the shroud and back into the power-cuffs held by several of the Harvest soldiers.

“Any of these pieces of shit dust-bunnies?!” asked the lead soldier.

“None sir, just a regular collection of junkies, a few crack heads, and even a few using Heroin. I didn’t even think that existed anymore?”

“It doesn’t matter what they were using, if it wasn’t dust I don’t care. Kill them all.”
“But sir..”

The lead soldier turned and glared at the man holding the power-cuffs who had questioned him. “Are you questioning my authority? Do you want me to take you to meet “our cousins”?

“No sir, no sir. I will comply with your orders sir. My apologies sir.”

“That’s what I thought. No get on with it. Oh and I know most of these pieces of shit have no feeling left since they dissolved their brains, but try and make it painful”.

The back-talking soldier gulped and croaked “Yes, sir”.

The lead soldier turned and headed down the stairs. As he opened the doors at the bottom he stepped out into the sunlight to the sound of screams from the dying junkies.

“What a day to be alive”. A chilling smile creeping across his face.

Travelling on the Brink – The Story of Winning Part 2

Do you know what happens on an aeroplane for 23 hours? I can tell you. Absolutely nothing. Well not absolutely nothing. You get a sore back, sore legs, sore neck. You get to experience the wonderful lack of sleep that comes with international air travel and you get to go slightly mad due to a combination of boredom and repeats of “Two and a Half Men”. Shudder. After seeing six episodes of “that show”, back to back, I am of the honest opinion that anyone can write in Hollywood. Here’s my pitch.

Charlie's Brother Whatshisname: Charlie, you really shouldn’t sleep with so many women

Laugh Track

Charlie: Why not?

Laugh Track

Whatshisname: It sets a bad example for my fat son.

Laugh Track

Fat Son: Don’t worry Dad, Charlie already set me straight. Men are supposed to sleep with as many women as they can. It helps reinforce the misogynistic stereotype that’s prevalent in television.

Laugh Track

Fat Maid: Disparaging comment about Charlie’s penis.

Laugh Track with whistling

End episode.

Ugh. It’s just awful. So that tripe got me from Melbourne to Broome but what was I to do for the next 10 hours in my small economy seat, trapped between a hulking, sweating blancmange of a man and an old lady with a bladder the size of a pea. No pun intended. Sleep was out of the question and I’d already grown sick of the tiny screen in the back of the chair in front of me, so instead I merely sat and waited. Sat and waited for 10 hours, the ten most boring, tiring and excruciatingly mind numbing hours of my life. Every now and then one of the cabin crew would offer me a drink or something to eat and I would graciously accept the meagre rations. When they moseyed off I would devour their offering with the veracity of a sewer rat. When I wasn’t waiting for more food and water like some P.O.W., I was wiggling my toes, staring blankly at the ceiling or fighting a strong urge to pick my nose, which had become the driest place on earth. Surely someone, somewhere must have developed a way for aeroplane air conditioning to not desiccate you from the inside out. I swear that pieces of my brain had cracked off and fallen into my nasal cavity. At least I had a reason to get up and go to the toilet often, even if it was one as disgusting as picking 40kg rocks out of my nose.

Every few minutes I checked the flight guide channel on the miniscule screen in front of me.

Surely it’s been an hour or so since last time, I thought. Wrong!

01.01  am – 8538km and 11 hours remaining.

Times passes…

01.13 am – 8503km and 11 hours remaining.

And it went on like this for most of the flight. No wonder I drove myself mad.

Finally and eventually we neared Dubai and I felt a huge sense of relief surge through me. Well it was either that or the blood circulating again after I’d been sat in the one spot for nigh on 6 hours.

The descent seemed to take twice as long as the flight and then we landed. And then it dawned on me. I was halfway across the planet from home. I was in the Middle East. I was, I was…DYING FOR A CIGARETTE! It had been 18 hours since my last one and I was half tempted to eat one from my pack. It didn’t help matters that the airport was huge and we still hadn’t reached the terminal after 15 minutes on a shuttle bus. Then came customs, then came the crowds at duty free and then came the dawning realisation that there wasn’t anywhere to smoke. I walked back and forward up the terminal and saw countless prayer rooms, showers, toilets and shops, but not one place to have a quick ciggy! I found the nearest info desk and asked where I could smoke. The lady behind the counter smiled and pointed past me and said “Just near gate 121”.

Can’t be too far

I was at gate 237. It was pretty much a full kilometre from where I was, but I wasn’t going to let a little thing like agonizing fatigue stop me from having that smoke. So I set off. Almost immediately I noticed something was not quite right.

Ow. Ouch. Ow. What the…?

14 hours squirming in my seat while wearing jeans had left me with the worse chafe of my life. Every step was like someone was running a belt sander on my inner thighs. But still I was undeterred. I set off down the terminal like some deranged cowboy, wincing and cursing the whole time. After about 20 minutes I reached the tiny, cramped and smoke filled room where smoking was allowed. The door was propped open, entirely defeating the point and people were huddled round like hobos over a drum fire. 

This is so sad I thought as I gleefully took my first drag in almost 20 hours.

 Look at these poor fools, trying to get in a quick smoke before their flights,

Deep drag in

You really must be desperate

Big breath out.

My smoke was finished in record time and I thought about having another but decided against it as I only had an hour or so before my flight and I wanted to have a quick shower. All of my clothes and toiletries were in my checked luggage but I had my wallet and was in the hugest duty free shopping centre I’d ever seen.

I spotted a chemist first and went in to buy soap and deodorant.

What the hell? How much is 30 in Australian money?

Dejected I walked out of the chemist and prepared to stink my way from Dubai to London. But wait! I had my phone in my pocket. I dialled my best mate… come on… pick up…

Hello.

Hey man, can you tell me what 30 Dubai moneys is in Australian?  He just laughed.

What’s their currency?

How the hell should I know? I’m at the airport and need to buy some crap can you tell me or not?

Aw nah man, I’m at uni, I’m not even near a computer, so how was your…click!

Useless.

I tried my next trustiest number

Brrrp. Brrrp.

Hello?

Hey Dad, can you tell me what the conversion between Australian and Dubai money is?

Hold on a sec…okay basically it’s a third. So whatever it costs, divide it by three and that’s the Australian equivalent.

Thanks Dad. Bye. Click.

So armed with this new knowledge I set out to by the essentials for my shower. At the chemist I bought, deodorant and soap. At a clothing store I bought socks, underpants and a t-shirt. I headed back towards the gate our flight was from and found the nearest shower block.

Great! I have an hour still before my flight. This is going to be awesome

Or so I thought. Once again, fate had conspired against me. In the shower block there were 5 cubicles, yet only 2 were operating. I was 4^th in line to use one of them. For twenty minutes or so, nobody went in and nobody came out. Then finally, at almost the same time two guys came out and two more went in. Leaving me clear to go next. Another twenty five minutes passed and on the inside I was raging.

Who the F### takes this long when they know there is a line out here. Motherf@#kin , inconsiderate pieces of sh!#.

I was very, very cranky.

I was doing my very best to keep calm, relax and wait my turn and was just about to lose the battle when the cubicles became free again.

I practically ran into my cubicle and was almost naked before I opened the door. I didn’t care; I wanted this shower more than I wanted the smoke. And there was no way I was missing my flight. So I stripped down and soaped up and I have to say that there has never been a more luxurious shower than that scummy, lime scaled and low water pressure cubicle in Dubai airport, terminal 232.

I showered as quickly as I could, because I am considerate and then turned the water off.

Now where’s that towel? Wait a minute. What towel?! I don’t have a towel and I didn’t buy a towel! FUUUUUUUUU…..

I was running out of time and I couldn’t miss my flight, but if I didn’t dry myself I was going to spend the next 7 hours, wet, uncomfortable and chafed. I grabbed my dirty t-shirt and removed as much water from my body as I could before the shirt was sopping and useless. My sweaty and frankly gnarly under pants came next. I used the outside of them as best I could. They took up approximately 30ml of water before they became useless. Then came my socks. They fared better than the undies, but not by much.

Great! I had a shower and now I smell of feet, sweaty balls and BO.

It wasn’t quite that bad, but I did feel as though the point of the shower had been defeated. My hair was dripping, my skin was only half dry and the clean clothes I bought were clinging to me. I was uncomfortable and unhappy. And it was time to board the flight to London.

This was going to suck.