Of Sappy Travels in the Dreamt-up Multiverse.

  It feels to me that dreaming is not just the rubbish of daily life working itself out, or Freudian sexual frustrations welling up from the Unconscious, or the rehearsing and solving of life's problems, but on the seventh level dreaming can be an introduction to and tour of the amazing, mystical multiverse us homo sapiens are sapient to. Take my dream of last night for instance, which I titled "The Temple."

I'm on a tour of the Dark Continent with my Anima as traveling companion. She is a combination of several of my girlfriends who I have traveled with over the years, Nicorette, Amiria and Sylvia. We've already visited many sacred structures and finally come to a jungle crossroads near which looms a colossal Temple, it's architecture combining Greek, Hindu, Parsi and Buddhist styles, and it's presence is quite forbidding. I have passed it many times in my travels and always been too overwhelmed to enter, pretending to myself that it's such an obvious landmark, it can't really have too great a significance. My female companion convinces me to enter and inside I am overawed by a magnificent sacred ritual, the atmosphere sending me into an ecstatic trance. The priests of this sanctuary welcome my girlfriend effusively and are quite kind to me as well, as if they've been waiting for me for years to visit them, and at last I've come.

I'm swept away by the mystical liturgy that is enacted out before me, seeming to honor the spirits of all the dead who have gone before us, not just the wise, but every ancestor that brought us to 'here and now', animals as well as fore-mothers. When eventually we leave the Temple to continue our life's sojourn, I'm quite exhilarated, blissed out, amazed by the symbolism of a sacred mystery underlying my mundane existence, and the surrounding Void. It gives me some joy and knowledge to carry on, my rationalism boosted by a sense of magic, for even in the spoiled 'developed world' ordinary life can be quite a slog.

With these raves I'm not trying to make out I'm some mystic saint, I'm a sleaze-bag like any other mixed up human, these are just the thoughts, dreams and experiences that have come to this homo homo sappy sapien thrashing his way thru a seeming chaotic world, that has manifold tediums to suffer but also awesome, enigmatic wonders to sometimes stumble upon and get inspired by. It's as if I can't live by science alone, wondrous as this natural Universe is, there's much that can't be explained, caught like a fairy from the corner of one's eye. But I don't want to become a religious nut, wooly-minded with spiritualism. The Mind plays phantasmagorical tricks on all of us but even as such is an amazing phenomena and takes us on incredible journeys. Even if we don't invent faster than light travel rocket ships to get us to other worlds, we have Mind to take us thru imagined multiverses. Our Dreamworld proves it.

Looking For Goa Magic.

I've been going to Goa for the New years' techno raves for the last 9 years and I've noticed every year the magic has been wearing thinner and thinner. Last New Years', 2005/2006, it was as flat as a steam-rollered cat, all of which I'd predicted for some time as the local Pollies don't want backpackers anymore, too much trouble, only 2 star tourists and up, thank you very much. The cops had hassled charas-smokers more and more, asking for huge bribes, shipping many off to the medieval gaol at Panjim as warning threats to all the other tokers, no more chillum smoking in circles and shouting "Bam Shankar!". And so the international freak set has stayed away, more and more. Goa was where trance dancing really took off in the late '80s, and was reaching its zenith in 1997 when I arrived. Seven thousand freaks would jump and hump, stomp and romp, shimmy and shake ecstatically to a tribal techno beat, a many headed/legged monster dancing as one, dreadlocks swaying, tatoos displaying, the maddest of jungle-bunnie scenes, at disco valley on the beach, in the bamboo forest or the compound of the Hilltop Hotel.

But over the years amoral thugs were attracted to the scene for money, drugs and sex, and horny Indians by the crore rushed in, drunkenly grabbing at the white titties, raping and plundering, so that it got less and less fun. And last year it hit rock-bottom, all maybe due to yours truly. The year before I had had the best New Years ever, a peak it would be hard to climb again, with great friends, hot highs and the coolest marathon of trance music spread over three days by a competitive crew of DJs from all around the world.

But on the 2nd day, on a bit of a come-down, after the high of ecstasy must come the crash of reality, I was more grumpy than I realised. When I tried to get back into the Hilltop venue with my cool Indian mates, the burly bouncers let me, the great white sahib, thru the gates but refused entry to my friends, they had to pay again for the privilege. This infuriated me as we'd already paid their entry price for the 3 day slog-fest. I argued with the bouncers but they were adamant, they wanted as much money as they could squeeze from whoever. I kept up the onslaught of demanding entry for my mates as I'd been a good patron for the last 8 years. The giant doormen got uptight and pushed me on my arse, I jumped up and got pushed on my arse again, 3 times it happened, till I was spitting chips. They were twice my size and half my age, really brave guys, and me the hip Baba who was so cool, setting the pace for the wild dancing at the gig like I was the head shaman, now getting shoved about like a piece of zero-class shit.

So I flipped and threw a curse upon the Hilltop, declaring it was finished, the money-grubbers could forget about their cash-cow, no one would go there any more, it was now to be called "the Hole-top", the party was over!!! I screamed my dumb-arse curse over and over like Prospero whipping up a tempest till the bouncers slunk back into their Hole-top totally weirded-out and crestfallen by this Aussie nutter.

One should always be careful of what one curses because it may come true. The following year, last New Years, when I thought I'd give Goa another go, I arrived to find the Pollies and cops had got sick of the noise, the rapes, the deaths, the robberies, the mess, and closed down the whole party scene of the Goan beaches, except for the 5 star hotels of course. (Each year a horrible murder has erupted, last year a British girl had GBH slipped into her drink by an Indian goonda and she died in the room where he was trying to rape her.) No more fun for the freaky backpackers, we drove around the back roads endlessly on our putzy motorbikes looking for "the party", and there was none to be had. Just a feeble one day event at the Hilltop, after paying a huge bribe to the cops and passing on the cost to us, the die-hard punters, and it was over too quickly.

Back to wandering the beaches like ghosts. The real freak-set seemed to now pass Goa by, the trance scene there is over, all things have their season and then the 'magic' moves on. Where oh where has it gone to? The Goan people are still the gorgeous, hospitable, all suffering folk they've ever been, and the beaches are nice to lie upon, and the seafood's cheap and fresh, and the Indian trinket market at Anjuna Beach is more packed and costly as ever, but the parties are flat, banal, pedestrian. Trance has had it's time in the limelight, maybe gone back to the secret enclaves, hidden oasis, mystique lagoons, primeval jungles and transcendent caves of old pagan times in some arcane far-off lands, not available for the masses, just the cognoscenti few.

(Most likely the far-flung beaches of Thailand where it's cheaper and no cops to bust or bribe, apparently the parties there are out of control but for me Thailand is like Bali, Australia's backyard, which I want to escape from.) (Or maybe rock'n'roll with electric guitars is having a comeback?) Where has the '"trance magic" gone? Maybe somewhere here in the deep bush of Auz, for we are young and free, and still fucking wild when the beat gets thumping. But then there's no traveling involved and I love travel. Goa will always be cool, the magic's gone from me.

Marat/Sade at Shitty Bricks.

Northcott Concentration Ghetto, the slum tenement wherein I barely exist, got in the newspapers again today, this time moaning about the the old dead guy found in his apartment. He was slumped by the window, a skeleton, having been dead 6 months without anybody noticing and the Yellow Press decried the alienation of contemporary life and the continuing horrors of the Northcott "suicide towers".

I was reminded of the so-called community effort of a few months ago, where the Belvoir Street Theatre troupe had staged a show called "Sticky Bricks" in the Northcott grounds, attempting to show the denizens the caring nature of Sydney's middle classes, arts-grant wankers getting paid well to portray community spirit. They got the local loonies involved, giving them a phantasmal hobby and a sense of self-importance, and charging the interested public $30 to watch the hapless residents cavort about like trained monkeys, smacking of that old French practice of the jaded rich being entertained by the antics of the lunatics in the mental hospital of Charnet, the Marquis de Sade directing the event. All the while the "Sticky Beaks" show at Northcott was witnessed from a privileged box seat by a dead corpse up in the tower, a member of a community that really cared about him.

A week after the theatrical extravaganza the toffy actors had disappeared back to their comfortable lives and the horror movie that was Northcott carried on in its zombie ways. I met one of the decrepit stars in the car-park, a cripple named Sandy, and I asked her how she enjoyed "Shitty Bricks".
"Oh it was lovely, bloody marvelous!" she mumbled, "and it was called "Sticky Bricks."
"But didn't you think "Sticky Beaks" was just bullshitting you about community involvement?"
 "It was "Sticky Bricks" and it was good, it made me feel important!"
"But what about the dead guy watching from his window? He didn't find "Shitty Bricks" was so involving?"
"It was called "Sticky Bricks!" and who gives a shit about the dead guy? I was a star for 15 nano-seconds and it made me feel real good so fuck off!"

Never under-estimate the lure of the staged spotlight, for the disconsolate any attention is good, even if it includes the Marquis de Sade smiling from his place in Hell.

Land of the Dead at Northcott.

I live in an infamous tenement block that gets on TV every 2 weeks for some horror story. It's next to Sydney Central Railway Station and I call it Northcott Concentration Ghettoe. I call it that because many lunatics have gotten turfed out of the mental hospitals and dumped in this Housing Department estate and joined by all the no-hoper drug addicts on disability pensions. All of them yammering on top of poor old age pensioners who have to put up with the muggings, beatings and continual abuse because they're not rich enough to live in the secure walled-fortresses that make up the rest of the suburb of Surry Hills. It's a version of Purgatory where we wait before we die.

The area was once a mecca for Bohemians but has been gentrified for the mega-rich and the lone island of poverty that is Northcott sticks out of its midst like the putrescent sore thumb of the walking dead. It's like George Romero's latest film, "Land of the Dead" in reverse, the zombies trapped in a tower while a sea of good citizens clamour around it, hoping one day to have it wiped off the map.

And the monstrous Media is the 5th column in this war of the classes, forever doing horror-movie stories of the place, once describing us as "rats in boxes". This week's creepy story was about the plague of 'ICE' addicts eking out their squalid existence, wallowing in piles of rubbish and filth, awake for weeks on end, picking at imaginary invaders under their skin till they're covered in purulent sores, laughing maniacally at the stupidity of the working masses who lead dreary drone lives in comparison to their nightmare speed-rush of brain fevered dumpster scavenging.

While I was up on the 11th floor, these 'ICE' zombies would often get in the lift with me, raving incoherently about the injustice of the world, and indeed not only their brains seemed shrunken, their very heads appeared micro-encapheletic, with hollowed eyes, teeth gone, weeping sores, stringy hair, really like zombies, and as the lift ascended I took my life in my hands for they stood behind me itching and scratching. But they're so brain dead they haven't got it together to commit clever crimes or attack strong dudes like me, just begging for scraps or sudden, impulsive muggings of old ladies are their forte, and like slow-motion zombies they are easy for a tough nut like me to push over, and so as long as one doesn't sneak up on me with a knife, I'm not so afraid.

What a dystopia to reside in! And what sorry lives drug-addicts lead, not aware that there are other ways, other styles, other worlds, they're brain-dead to potentials and wonders. How the Hell did they get like that? It seems so sub-human. Were their lives so handicapped, their hopes so distorted, only nasty drugs like ICE and smack could console them or dull the pain? (I suppose many of them are victims of a class-ridden world, the elite themselves living off the slave-reservoir of bruised flesh, the cops thriving by busting junkies, throwing them to the ground, booted feet on scrawny necks, it's so easy to pick on the drug-zombies, they make great punching bags.)

I should never feel sorry for myself as I've led a fabulous life in comparison, of adventure, love, fun, achievement, knowledge, eroticism, ecstasy. And it's only living here at Bauhaus Northcott that I can get a denizen's eye-view of the sorry state of the human condition, the interloping Media sensationalizing the hard daily reality of senior citizens and front-line service workers living in fear and loathing in this socialist's Utopia gone wrong. Those ugly ICE ghouls should be shipped to a science station in Antarctica where they can not only feel at home and get all the ICE they want but they could be experimented upon in the science station to find out exactly how these living dead still manage to walk! And most cops should go with them to keep them corralled, the two types belong together.

Just joking, Northcott has its peaceful periods and communal joys, it can be a refuge and a haven for cheapskates like me. Half the residents are harmless pensioners and many try to instill a sense of community here, often helping their neighbors in whatever way they can. And maybe the addicts are the true revolutionaries, fighting an unjust class system by copping out and shitting in everyone's faces? We've all got our battles to fight.

The End of Gay.

I'm reading an interesting book these days which is stirring ideas in me, "The End of Gay (and the Death of Heterosexuality)" by Bert Archer. The basic premise is that sex is an activity not an identity; after winning basic civil rights people have moved on to just enjoy sex/life when it happens without tying one's soul in knots over labels and pigeon-hole identities. I've been an active homosexual all my long life and participated radically in the gay rights movement and it seems Society got me to identify my inner-most self as a sexual pervert of the "homosexual" kind as the State finds it necessary to categorise all and thus control all.

But I've never lived/socialised in the gay ghetto or wore the latest clone uniform, or even been particularly limp-wristed, not that there's anything wrong with these different behaviours, homosexual acts cab be experienced by many personality types, from all walks of life; what I'm indicating is that I try not to totally identify as a "homosexual", a noun rather than a verb, (as Gore Vidal droned on about.). I interest myself in many other worldly activities for a major part of my life, such as.art, politics, science and history, and surfing pop culture via current affairs, literature, movies, rock'n'roll and techno/trance music. All this had me running with an eclectic crowd, artists and anarchists of all persuasions, mostly so-called straight, where sexuality wasn't an issue.

I have always adored women and most of my best friends are such, not fag hags, just good friends and great company. Looking back on my life I realised that when i was younger I had sex/heavy petting with many women without thinking much about it, and didn't identify myself as Bi-sexual either then, I was more open and just did it. I'm ecstatically homo oriented but I just wasn't hung up about who I was with, if it felt good and I liked them a lot, we mucked about. The last 21 years or so I've become much more rigid in my ways, thru fear, discomfort, shyness, I haven't got it on with girls tho I hang out with some beauties. If a lithe, attractive, smart woman took me by the hand and the environment was right, I'd attempt to experience such love, but I'm old and gronky and haven't been that lucky, and would probably freak out, especially if there was pressure to perform.

For example, once when I was about 31 back in 1981 I met a hot blond woman at a punk rock gig, we'd met before but on that night we particularly hit it off as if our mohawks were on fire and, being smart and punk-pushy, she insisted on coming back to my squat in Pyrmont with me after the band packed it in. She wanted to conquer a poof I guess. We indulged in heavy kissing, like two succubi stuck on each other, and I got lost in the embrace, it was succulent and erotic. Then she tried to suck my flaccid cock to arouse it into action, she vacuumed it for hours but nothing happened, I couldn't get it up for her no matter how hard she sucked, I was set like jelly in my homo ways, I loved the intimacy of embracing her but I didn't feel to fuck her. I then made a huge faux-pas by trying to pull a long hair from a mole on her face, it wouldn't come out no matter how hard I tugged and she screamed in pain, "Leave it be, I've got a hair on my chin, so what, does it make me any less a woman?" I never saw her again after that night.

For all this blabbing and fantasising and semantics, which Bert Archer in "The End of Gay" himself gets hung up and lost in, there's no getting away from the fact that men have and will always turn me on bad, their cocks, muscles, hairy bodies, masculine behaviour, funky pheromones, all get my guts churning in ways that girls never will. So, I might not be a classic gay, in fact many of us may be over IT, but our behaviours are still polymorphous erotic, fixating particularly on certain fetishistic items that tend to center on specific gender, and that's what makes us horny, happening individuals.

I can only talk freely like this and behave in such erotic fashion because I live in a free democracy like Auz where, after years of struggle, we won the right to express ourselves equally with the rest of society as gays,in 1983. This is denied, even brutalised in many parts of the world, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, so the fight must continue worldwide, for all of us. A fight against conservative forces like fundamentalist Christians and Muslims who'd like to see ecstatic, sexually-active people wiped from the map, the activity not just the identity. And that ongoing struggle can be done collectively and individually by enjoying one's orgiastic life to the full, whether labels are eschewed or worn proudly on the chest. We've still got to fight for our freedoms as every day they're eroded. Equality in marriage is the battle of the moment, for all that it's an outmoded Het institution not guaranteeing happiness, let the GLBTs find that out for themselves after they get married. (To me GLBT sounds like a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.)

Even in the 21st century, so many movies and pop songs have a disparaging remark about "homos", "fags", "fairies", we're always less than zero, it's so disheartening, Gay Lib paid lip service to while around the corner gay bashing continues. For youngsters "gay" is a dirty word, "Oh, it's so gay!" they say as a put down. Maybe they mean those snippy, girly stereo-types, who have even stabbed me in the back, in the workforce, in the competition for the few arts grants awarded disenfranchised minorities. Bitchy poofs can be so annoying but they've got to stick together and somehow armor themselves against the wall of hate penning them in their ghettos.

"He's a bitter queen", you say. "So what, live and let live," I say! I can't say I'm proud to be Gay, that sounds trite, I am what I am, I was born and grew that way, it's a hard reality, I fight to be me, I'm a warrior, I love my own sex, big deal! In Sydney I'm over Gay Lib but still have to punk sneer "gayness" into the faces of all the low-brow's who get in my way. I pray I survive my campaign, the bigoted morons are everywhere, around the world.

Moaning from Underground

 To continue bitching, the result of the competition of the Kings Cross Arts Festival was that an ex-Mormon priest who runs a private art school won with a hideous self-portrait. It looked like "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and it was hung next to mine just to put a hair up my arse. The competition was supposed to be "Images of the Cross", and how his ugly mug was an image of the Cross I don't know, but it was safe, and he had to win as there was too much investment in his private art school to let an untrained, gutter-level artist like myself get the better of him and win any more kudos, (I won last year.).

I noticed the crowd on opening night took a long hard appreciative look at my work which was a double-edged satire, done in cartoon style but with lots of the written word via advertising slogans, to be read in one page like a graphic novel. I gave the competing Art Master's oily visage, (in three ugly parts!) only the cursory grimace it deserved, it had nothing going for it except narcissistic decadence, and yet he won, he was best friend's with the "Booze on Tap" Gallery's manager. I had satirized consumer capitalism, which in its absurdity cries out to have shit put on it, and at the same time I satirized the idea of "revolution", as it's obvious nobody's going to set up a guillotine these days and chop off the elite classes' collective head.

(I depicted John Howard and his Liberal Party front bench getting their heads chopped off, and the winner of this art competition was a die-hard Liberal voter.) The powers that be know 'They" can get away with whatever 'They' want these days as they have the technology of oppression in place: surveillance cameras, computers, police/army, the media: we are made to pay for our oppression, there will never be a revolution in Auz.

It looks like "we" are being returned to Dickensian times, workers begging for any shit jobs and the poor starving in the gutter, sleeping ten to a bed, when they can find a bed, and falling dead drunk on gin, only these days it's 'ice' and 'smack'. And nobody dares speak about the shit going down, 'war' rages, children are killed and maimed, and armaments-shares make huge profits for investors in the wondrous free-market. If a painter dares to paint it out he/she is buried in the underground, a "cone of silence" descends, and portraits of famous wankers are lauded in the public sphere instead. The "Elite" seem to find even one artwork can be dangerous and revolutionary and so the artist has to be killed off. (I got framed and squashed by the pigs in the early '90s for the armed robbery of a cake-shop, of all things, but that's another story, to be told if ever I can get my long labour of a book out into the open.)

I think of that wonderful artwork by Delacroix in the 18th century, with the ship sinking in a storm and the raft of survivors trying to make it to shore. Apparently the French plebs were so inspired by it, they rioted and this led into the French Revolution. Oh if only such effects could be engineered by art today!

The 7 Tenets of Toby Z.

 As one of the 30 million Bloggers on the WEB I certainly accept that I'm a dickhead, a narcissistic fuckwit, one meaningless blob amongst 7 billion striving human entities on this crazy planet Earth, and my thoughts carry little weight. But I never promised to be Jesus Christ, Albert Einstein or even William Burroughs, I'm just blogging to get shit off my pussy chest, another hobby to have fun with, writing gets my endorphins flowing, and in such a vast, alienating empty universe, it's somehow comforting to throw my potted crapulous thoughts out into the void, as if screaming aloud, "I exist, damn you for saying I shouldn't!"

And this brings me to the 7 Tenets I try to consider every time a fellow "human" approaches me. This bullshit  is what I'd like to live by if I only wasn't such a fuck-up. While I'm a deadbeat, cynical, nihilistic, cantankerous, pessimistic caterwauling alley-cat I know there's two sides to every phenomena, good as well as bad, so every one of my negative tenets has a golden flip-side. 

1) Everybody is a Wanker, so don't believe the bullshit/facade/spin that gets thrown at you. (Be honest, be cool, tell it how it is.)

2) Everybody is frightened, running scared of something, more scared of Life/Death than you. (So be brave, be your self, chase your dreams.)

3) Everybody is hung up on Sex. Sex often lurks somewhere in all transactions/processes. (Everyone is looking for/needs LOVE.)

4) Everybody worships Money more than any God. It is the ruling Religion on this planet. (Money is nothing, people/the living universe everything.)

5) Everybody is a sucker for Celebrity and Fame, the latest incarnation of authoritarian religion and thus everybody gives into Herd Mentality, rushing like Lemmings over the nearest cliff for any fad or fame whore's directive. (Think for yourself, seek out information, question, be your own trendsetter.)

6) Everybody makes an attempt at manipulation and one must suss out the hidden agendas of everyone you meet so as survive and flourish. Many are trying to make a living stripping the skin from your back. (Project compassion, try to help as many as possible. Live simply and for simple pleasures and, remember, there is no God.)

7) Nobody has the right line, on anything, not J.C., the Pope, the President, Mao, Marx or Andy Warhol, and especially not me, which makes this crap a paradox, but that's what the Universe is, a Chaos of clashing paradoxes. (Anything goes, do what thou will, just dont hurt anybody. Trust yourself, follow your heart and intuitions.)

I agree that I'm the biggest wanker of all, but as a self-confessed curmudgeon I try not to run bleating with the herd, I try to think for myself, not easy when "The Ministry of Misinformation" keeps all the facts locked in its vaults. Mostly it's a miracle to keep safe and wise in your apartment with a few friends as fellow denizens of the quiet, personal Utopia you've set up within.

The Queer on the Edge.

Oh shit, here's another bitch rave about being cornered as a poof'! What's my problem? Where's my pride? I guess I've got to emphasize that being fucked over as a gay is one of the seven through-lines of my text and what has driven me to daily contemplate suicide.

Reading about Condoliza Rice, how she overcame great obstacles of race and gender to get to the top, proving the great beauty of "democracy" today, I wonder if it would work for a homosexual, could he become president if it was known he sucked cocks in a cottage tea-room? There are not many public role models for Homos: few famous film stars, directors, politicians, whatever, dare come out, for their careers get ruined. I made the big mistake back in the 'ra ra' early days of Gay Lib when I had published a short story, "Welcome to the Men's" in an anthology "Edge City on Two Different Plans", wherein I described a life of cruising every beat possible from the age of twelve onward. When I later tried to have a film career, it dawned on me I was never going to get up on stage to receive an award on national television when next day the Daily Terror would blaze front page, "Movie Genius is Notorious Cocksucker".

It has always seemed so unfair that what was probably hardwired into me, and definitely solidified by society, should get me tortured, to suffer prejudice 24/7, and especially as I never really identified my soul purely with who I had sex with. Actually, I rarely think of my homo nature, I spend much of my time pondering world history, politics, science/technology, pop culture, social gossip, blah blah blah. Most of my friends are straight, and my sexuality is rarely an issue. I come from a working class family, am a libertarian, a neo-pagan, an artist, a palliative-care nurse, a gnostic-agnostic, a misanthropic humanist, an adventurer and die-hard individualist. What a pity therefore that I'm pinned by "Them" as a "Gay", and thus limited in my potential.

The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardis Gras originated from a protest march in 1978 where the cops beat the shit out of us but nowadays has pigs as just another macho float with mostly heterosexual tourists cheering the parade on. ( In the late Naughties They even dropped Gay from the title, it's just the Sydney Mardi Gras and TV stars at the opening party make sure the camera crews know they are NOT gay  by stating so - so tell me gays aren't less than zero!). It looks like we're seen as colourful, amusing freaks by society but overnight the Right-wing conservatives could take-over and reneg on all the hard-won rights, send us off to concentration camps and Het society would live on without a bat of the eyelashes.

Stereotypes and prejudices still daily box me in, most "straight's" faces fall when they clap eyes on me, jobs and advancement are really hard to get. I'm angry and I want to break out of my confinements, to really be liberated and join productive humanity, what a queer desire! If I'd been born into privilege it wouldn't have mattered but to be poor, handicapped and a poofter, fuck it's hard to surf the cruelty and succeed at whatever, even my fellow poofs want to kill me. I've never belonged to any group, bent or straight, always on the edge, the outsider, outcast, outlaw.

The best I can say about this life as a stranger is that at least my art is edgy and that's what I aimed for. It can be seen from this rave that I'm a terribly fucked-up fag, probably full of self-hatred, encouraged by a heterosexual supremacist and often fascist world. I said it right from the beginning of my "2001 Restless Nights", I'm a hissing, spitting, scratching, howling punk poofy cat and I make no apologies.

Return of the Bent 2 Cents Piece.

 I was awakened, cursing, early this morning, by a continuous hammering at my door. I layed awake all night and only fallen asleep at dawn, like a member of the vampire race, and was furious to be dragged from my bed. I've been up on the 11th floor of the infamous suicide tower at Northcott Concentration Camp in inner-city Sydney while "They" renovated my basement flat, and nobody should know my whereabouts, it dumbfounded me that someone should be loudly seeking me out in my secret lair. I creaked the door open a crack only to spy the craggy face of Brandon, my long-time ago fuck-buddy who has been thankfully missing for three years, he's uglier than ever and demanding egress. I yelled at him to "Fuck-off", it was "too early" and "I don't want to see you", and flounced back under my blankets while he continued to bang, bang, bang and shout my name pleadingly.

What a nerve! Why do these fuck-wits have to continue to come back into my life as if I owe them a living? OK, we were fuck buddies for a few years and had the hottest sex sessions, some of the best in my life. He was a butch, heavy-metal rocker with long blonde hair, a cherubic-faced demon who played rugby, built like a rhinocerous and, for all his machismo, loved to be fucked, hard. I couldn't fuck that guy hard enough. The best sex ever was in my kombie-van parked high above Bondi beach on the clifftop on a stormy night. While lightning and thunder crashed upon us and Mettalica erupted from the quadrophonic sound system, I fucked him ecstatically to the beat of the rain on the roof, the Universe rock rock rocking along with the van.

Thus we'd had a lot of fun, but to cover up his homo soul, to compensate for loving it up the arse, he confessed to me that he went poofter-bashing on Oxford Street and in the dark park beats. This to me was a turn off, that he was so cruel to his own kind and that he wouldn't honestly live out his gayness, it was a total secret, for his wife and heavy metal rock'n'roll mates would be horrified at the gritty truth. Plus I suspected he trawled all the sex clubs of the gay ghetto and only came to me as a last resort when no one else would have him, and I chilled towards him, discouraging him from coming around.

The final straw was when he appeared late one night knocking on my door and when I opened up I couldn't recognize him for he was in the tackiest drag, frumped up to look like Lil Lotta, his short blond hair pushed up with a hair-clip, he was squeezed into a tatty fur collared jacket and mini-skirt that looked like they'd been found in a dumpster, and he'd slapped on overdone, messy make-up, with torn stockings and klunky high-heels, he truly looked ridiculous. He clumped into my flat and demanded I fuck him tho I'd always assured him I only got turned on by masculine men. I freaked and shrieked in his face, "Why did you do it, why do you want to look like an ugly sheila?"

"I just felt like a change," he mumbled. I made him go to the bathroom and wash the make-up off and change back into his torn jeans and flannel shirt. He came sheepishly back to me and again asked for me to fuck him. I grunted with finality, "Never again, you've blown away all my masculine fantasies, fuck-off!" And abashedly he left.

Now here he was, years later, returned again like a bent two cent piece, as if I would jump for joy at the prodigal buddy's resurrection. He finally went away tho I dread him coming back tonight, whining and scrabbling at my windows. He's not the only one to come back thus. Rough trade, rent boys, one night stands, fuck buddies, always come home to roost no matter what devious crimes they've perpetrated upon their patronizing sugar daddies, for homos have no family but each other, and when no one wants you any more and the gutter is your last-stop refuge, there's still the possibility of that stupid old fag you picked up aeons ago, the one that seemed so desperate, maybe he'll forget all the shit you heaped upon him and provide shelter again, for one more night.

The life of a homo in the 20th century was like living in a war zone, everyone out to kill us and being raped repeatedly by the soldiers, with very little love ever experienced. No wonder some of us are so fucked up and twisted! I have to confess that I myself am a bent seven cent piece.

P.S. And he did come back, a few years later, thankfully dressed as a macho man, but when I hinted that maybe he was looking for a fuck, like always, he spluttered and harrummphed and said, "Oh you're not still going on about that are you? I was never really into it!!!)

Becoming Non-famous

 When I was a kid I was obsessed with the movies, believing nobody had as special a relationship to cinema as me, it was as intimate as my deepest soul, and that one day, when I grew up, I would assuredly be a movie star. I absolutely believed in this, as if it were a new religion and I was its chief acolyte. When nobody discovered me I overcame impossible obstacles and made my own movies, with me as the star. But still the world didn't pick up on my fabulousness and I was relegated to faceless Nobody-ville for the duration of my pathetic life. Of course I wanted the riches that came with the fame, I've always been a lazy sod and thought wealth would allow me to lay about, eating grapes and watching my favorite movies, preferably those with me in the leading role. Of course, we're all the lead stars of our own "movies in progress", but some of us can actually go mad hankering for stardom. (I call such fevered movie delusions celluloiditis and have met many sufferers.)

I even swore that if I was not rich and famous by the time I hit fifty I would either kill myself or rob a bank and flee overseas with the proceeds. But I ended up a big chicken, every day was a new adventure to be confronted and overcome, and the idea of prison so terrifying, with my wings of freedom clipped and cruel inmates crowding me in, I eschewed the life of the crim for that of the dreamer and wanker, wallowing in the gutter, staring at the heavens. And I went back to nursing, which I'd studied as a fall-back security job in my late teens, to which I'd promised myself I'd never return. Deep in the night I trundle about the nursing home corridors thinking about my failure, as if I had a flashlight on my non-career as an infamous "monstar", and then I roll over the corpse-like oldies and the life-long congenital vegetables to clean the shit from their adult nappies, the smell making me want to vomit relentlessly.

A man in the next bed has half his face missing, you can see up thru his decayed nose and eye-socket into his brain-case. He'd been brought into the nursing home from a life spent on the streets where he'd often fallen dead-drunk unconscious into the sludge and flotsam of back-alley gutters, his face in the rot to be rotted away. He kept aloof and never spoke, as if his 'phantom of the opera' mask had evicted him from the human race. He glared at me with his one eye, defying me to keep looking at the horror of his existence and I could only smile weakly and back away. (When he eventually went into the hard slide of dying I sat with him all night and he clasped my hand tightly, he needed human comfort after all.)

I heard a moaning noise from the next room and I went to investigate, switching on the light, my compassion aroused by the sight. Two women share the room, one is an eighty year old dementia sufferer, the other is her fifty year old Downes Syndrome daughter, together in the nursing home because neither can look after the other anymore. They looked quite similar, like doppelgangers of ancient crones, sitting up in their beds in unison, and both peered at me myopically, as if to say, "Who am I? Where am I? How did I get here?" I quietened them with soothing whispers and they both fell back beneath their sheets as I tiptoed from the room.

Where is my fame in all this? No accolades, gold statuettes and million dollar contracts. Just service to humanity, the little I can give. It must be my fate, my kismet, my sadhana. I can only crack a cryptic smile, in resignation; I guess I don't really mind, it's the WAY IT IS. It's always been a spiritual journey I've been on, it's good for my soul to be here, I should count my blessings to work and live in a futuristic city like Sydney, and be a sentient citizen of the 21st century. I'm a dharma bum and this is my dharma. Fame can go fuck itself.

21 Reasons Not To Suicide.

Yeah, yeah, I have to tell you again, every day when I wake up I ask myself, "Why don't I kill myself today?" I didn't end up with the fabulous life that I dreamed I'd have when I was a kid; that is, I didn't become a movie star and travel to a galaxy far, far away. But I did get pretty far-out into the light, I must admit. Yet each day feels so tortuous to drag my weary arse thru, and the history of the human race reeks of such horror it would put Nosferatu off his blood-suck, so how to keep going?

When I was a young man I nursed my yoga teacher while he was dying of a deadly Eastern disease called Kalazu, and he insisted on spending his last days walking amongst the Himalayan snowy fastnesses. He was hoping the arduous trek in the high mountains would kill him, and he would spend his last moments overlooked by those glorious guardian-peaks and gazing into the Milky Way that seemed within arm's reach. He ended up dying down below in Rishikesh due to my temper tantrums forcing us to turn back for I couldn't face dealing with a dead body so far from civilization. But ever since then I've had the fantasy that when totally weary of life, I too would trek into the icy Himalayan wastes, like Frankenstein's monster in the Arctic desert, and disappear from the pages of history, because I wouldn't even rate a footnote after all my artistic efforts, and I was so sick of it all: the venality, exigency and stupidity of the human condition.

I also had the fantasy that I might be taken into the Secret Community, that Utopia of Shangri-la hidden in the Himalayan heights, where I would experience true human love and profound wisdom. I have had repetitive dreams wherein I am welcomed by such a community of high souls, a group I seem to recognize from previous astral journeys, who caress me, feed and console me, and with whom I study esoteric lessons of the Universe in their cosmic oasis in the snow. I fantasize that one day I will truly meet this mysterious crew, and every time I go up high in the Himalayas I peer up every valley and defile hoping to catch a glimpse of their sacred monasteries and glowing auras. It never happens, and instead I imagine I wander amongst the cold mountain vales, lie down somewhere hidden from view, cut my wrists, take sleeping pills and feel the last rays of sunshine on my tear-streaked face, the Ganges river roaring not far off, and slowly, blessedly I melt away.

Thinking about this, one morning I walked out of a village high in the Himalayas, far up the mountain road, snow-caps looming around, and an icy sleet falling. There was no sunshine for me to melt into, it was a real drag to try to feel blissed-out in the freezing rain. I'd left my Indian mate behind in the hotel and he would cause a grand hullabaloo on discovering my disappearance, would rouse the whole village up to search the mountain-sides, for weeks if need be, such was his loving loyalty. I couldn't do it to him, and the hospitable villagers neither. I'm heavily hard-wired to survive, having lasted all these years and overcome many disasters. Always I disclaim, "One more day, grant me one more day." Maybe tomorrow I will walk thru that white-light door. But not today. There's yet more to achieve, and always more to experience, something marvelous may come around the corner, and looking back, cool things have come, and what a piss-off if I had missed out on them.

The last 12 years have been particularly stunning, wandering the world like a dharma bum, feted in France as a happening artist, chased down the alleys of Amsterdam by eager hustlers, consoling the ghosts of slaves in fortress dungeons in the high mountains of Morocco while smoking golden hash and listening to the wind from Africa sing siren songs of "Come to me!"

I traipsed the seven hills of Lisbon and the endless road from the source of the Ganges River down thru ancient Delhi with its Mughal mausoleums to Rajasthan forts and then Mumbai by the Arabian sea, the nightclubs and picture-palaces that mirrored my fantasy of flying on the back of a genii to esoteric temples high in the Hindu Kush. The sleeper-bus to Goa and ecstatic dancing in the coconut groves to techno beats, tranced-out with the international freak-set, all one tribe, throbbing, thriving, thrilling, into the heart of which I am pumping. The whole world is there for our embrace, it's stupid to give in to entropy and indolence, what a waste of potential, to remain in bed, wrists cut, bleeding eternally.

And maybe, just maybe, I still have things to contribute to this crazy world, it's not over yet baby! And as my soul is whisked back there to the Himalayan heights, I looked about me at the unwelcoming mountain crags where I thought to spend my last few hours in misery on this uncaring earth. I shivered, it wasn't halcyon or honorable to die half-young, and, anyway, I was too gutless and vivacious to give up my ghost. I walked back down that infinite, winding highway, back into the klunky village, to the welcoming smile of my Indian companion waiting at the hotel. I would have further adventures, for a few years more at least. Oh what an awesome Universe IT IS! Buried in this rave are my 21 reasons why I won't be committing suicide just yet.

www.amazon.com/author/tobyzoates

If you enjoyed this story please go to the WEB address above and consider buying my book of tales about growing up anarcho-queer, rock and roll punter and mystic adventurer in Australia and India of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

The Infinite Highway.

Last night I dreamed I got on a train and was taken deep into the night, away from my intended destination which was only a short distance away. I was taken far out of the city, and had to jump the train and hitch-hike back to Sydney. I passed thru an unfriendly country town where I was viewed with stranger-danger and no-one would give me directions to the highway. After much stumbling about I found a road I prayed was leading back to the city and I waited there endlessly for some kind soul who might give me a lift. For the umpteenth time in my weary life I found myself beside an infinite highway which came out of the darkness and led back into darkness. This is a repetitive dream, I am forever traveling and I don't know where I'll end up.

Recently I was returning from gorgeous Goa to the city of Bombay and the bus stopped at a roadside dhaba (diner). After my requisite chai I wandered up to the highway to view the consoling stars in the black heavens. I recognized the spot as a site from my dreams, the highway appearing from the dark and disappearing into the dark; headlights flashing from nowhere as vehicles came at me, then melting back into the gloom as the vehicle continued on its way. And only the light of the dhaba behind me representing the one, small spot of civilization, as support, as succor, otherwise it was all chaos, wilderness, the unknown. Thru-out my life I am always lost on that highway, a mystery as to how I got there and where I'm going, the heavens, the earth, all an awesome enigma.

And after Goa I went high up in the Himalayas, to the snow-line and a magic temple to Shiva the Destroyer, the dancing, whirling Universe meditating on existence, where a hot-springs fills a tank. You can sit in the hot-water and view the snow-caps, have icy sleet fall upon your face after smoking the local hashish and feel very high. There's a wooden chalet to sleep snugly in at night and delicious vegetarian food to warm the stomach, but no phones, no television, sometimes no electric power at all.

And every time I'm weary of my contemporary rat-race life I escape to these heights and have some healing time-out. On this visit I was extra weary and wanted to end it all. I thought of walking out of the tiny village in the early morning, into the snowy fastnesses and cutting my wrists in some hidden defile. But I didn't do it. There still seemed something to live for, the grand search for meaning revealed there was no meaning; the journey, the quest was THE FUN, there was no grand Destination except death and I'd get there eventually, for me Life was all about Moving, moving on down that infinite road.

The Anarcho/Mystic's Endless Suicide Note.

Today I joined the post/post-modern human race and started this Blog; as a cerebral soul who lives in his own head I might as well get active, climb out of myself, jump into cyber-space and swim in the pool of swirling ideas. If one miraculously continues to exist in the 21st century one might as well have the most fun possible, in mind and body, and that includes floating about in the collective world consciousness of the World Wide Web. Finding all human society to be absurd, I can't help but be a bullshit trickster who has spanned the centuries, having been born in 1949 and survived into the sci-fi world of 2011.

Toby the Punk Poofy Cat is not a real person, he is not me, he is a fictional character made up to express my angst and joy at daily living. He hisses, spits, moans and groans, scratches and reveals himself in patches; to tell about the real me would be intrusive but one can certainly get hints, angles, reflections. I think it's impossible to relate Reality, to tell the Truth, it all gets filtered thru my obsessions, my moods, my delusions, my quirky attitude and in my stories I embroider, confess, conflate, confabulate, opinionate, obfuscate, fantasise, glorify and denigrate about IT ALL. Toby is a punked out, poofed up crazy cool cat, a curmudgeon who critiques everything including himself; a wanker artist screaming for recognition but if he ever got IT it would mean he was dead; a queer homo forever uptight over society's antipathy and disrespect yet himself disrespectful of all institutions and sacred cows; and a retard who is existentially challenged, daily considering suicide but never able to finish his suicide note, this Blog, cause there's always something more to bitch and sing about.

Thus I toy with the creative writing of poetry, fantasy and gutter-level social realism, from Syney to Bombay and into the future. I've experienced many marvels, here in Auz and whilst traveling the world, garnering boons and wounds, overall finding life to be an awesomely mysterious adventure, an intriguing enigma to be unraveled, suffered and enjoyed, beyond the horrors of war, slavery and exploitation, if possible. And as a citizen of Auz I'm lucky, much is possible for me, so read on for a picaresque poofter's adventures if I pique your interest.

( And consider this Blog to be my "2001 Australian Nights", endless tales to ward off the endless darkness, a long, long suicide note that if I ever get to the end of it, it means I'm dead.)

www.amazon.com/author/tobyzoates

If you enjoyed this story please go to the WEB address above and consider buying my book of tales about growing up anarcho-queer, rock and roll punter and mystic adventurer in Australia and India of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.