The Haunting of Mr.Foibles.

If I was an X-Man I would be called Mr. Foibles for the fact that I'm a mix of high ideals and ignoble bitchiness. If my own desires are thwarted, like getting the work I need, I squeal like a stuck pig and give off bad vibrations that have the potential to ignite fires and freeze hearts. My stint at Murderith House is a case in point for I let out all my shit, imagining I'd been done hard by, when the people concerned had other agendas of course, for we're all stuck, seething, in our own universes. I thought 'They' had it IN for me, but 'They' had bigger worries, I don't even exist, and I cursed 'Them' more than 'They' deserved, I'm sorry, it just shows what a "real fucking idiot" I can be. When I needed a job reference 'They' gave me one unstintingly, a rave review, and saved my working life. I've now got employment with a Saint and have one last tale to tell of Murderith House, for I'll likely never go back there.

The last night I was on duty at lovely Murderith House, just after midnight, my female Polynesian assistant came running up to me, eye-balls rolling, jumping out of her skin to remind me that all the doors should be locked, gazing up the corridors as if into Hell. As I went to secure the front door I heard my other Fuzzy Wuzzy assistant ask her who she was talking to. They both came back to me and, eye-balls popping, announced they'd both seen me gazing thru the glass door at the other end of the corridor, the spectre then flitting into the outside kitchen. "But I've been here all the time, what are you talking about?" "We both seen it plain as day, a pale figure looking at us!" I rushed up the corridor and explored the outside kitchen, starkly empty, except for my own 3D existential haunting.

It just so happened that the TV in the lounge room gave off eerie music, "oooooooohhhhhhhh, dah dah dah daaaaaaahhhhh!" lilting thru the nursing home to add hair-raising sound effects to the mysterious appearance of the shade. I looked at my assistants with their bugaboo eyes and said, "I knew the day I clapped eyes on this renovated witch's cottage of a nursing home, it was haunted! But don't worry, I'm not easily daunted, I'll tackle whatever comes!" (Of course, if there's gonna be a ghost trap anywhere in this world, a vortex of spectral hauntings, i would have to be an old nursing home for thousands have died there.) My assistants gave me a skeptical look and went about their business. From then on I couldn't settle, every reflection, glimmer, squeak and light beam made me jump, my flesh crawl, my mind imagining wraiths swirling in the corner of my eye.

Just after 1am there was a loud "Ring! Ring!" at the front door. We never got visitors at that ungodly hour and I jumped in the air, my nerves frayed for I could see a tall wavering figure thru the frosted glass. I crept to the door and slowly swung it open, and there stood a tall dark phantom wearing some kind of uniform. My eyeballs popped as I thought, "Oh shit, the ghost of a cop has come to get me!" The guy looked at my stricken pale face and said, "I've come to deliver a patient from the hospital." I stared at him stupidly, couldn't focus on the reality, my mind in turmoil from his wraith-like arrival. "What? What do you mean?" He glared at me like I was a raving lunatic, as if thinking the nurses in this place were as batty as the demented oldies. "I've come to deliver a patient. Where's the ambulance entrance?" I quickly realized he was in reality an AMBULANCE DRIVER and not a ghost and I got my shit together to give him proper directions, feeling like a right fool. Shit! Murderith House was getting to me, time to move on, get a better job in a newer facility.

XXX-Men

Here under the suicide towers of Northcott Concentration camp I didn't sleep the whole night, my neighbours on all sides created a huge racket and my worries crowded in on me. Cursula and Bawl on one side shrieked, whined, nagged and cursed till 3am, "How dare you! How dare you say such shit!" "Oh, Bawl, get out of my head, you're putting thoughts in my head, you're controlling me!" "You cunt! What am I doing here? Why do I put up with such shit?" "I've tried so hard, I pay for everything, can I lick your boots?" On and on, I wanted to throw a brick thru their window.

The prick above me decided to lift weights from 1am onwards, thump, thump, clatter, clatter, bang, bang, as the metal hit the floor, it sounded like he was shifting mountains, he's an over-weight "muscle Mary" emigre from Russia, quite cracked and not to be messed with, pink eyes like an albino rat, I've tried to complain and risked my life for it, he would've ripped my face off if I didn't dance out of the way. Eric the schitzo on the other side of me howled like a jackal till dawn, it creeps me out so much I'm in danger of rushing out and chopping him with a meat cleaver and then pleading nervous break-down to the cops. He 's been leaving his water taps running 24/7 again, the flood seeping down thru the concrete and welling up thru the floor of my bedroom, turning it into a miasma swamp, he's undermining the foundations of the whole building, one day it will cave in on us all and put us out of our misery. A glance into his abode is a real shocker, worse than any 'Bad Boy Bubby' scenario, desolate bare, a dirty mattress on the floor, a milk crate to sit upon, looks like he's wiped his bum on the walls, but the Housing Dept have left him there all these years for us poor sods to live with, it's all too difficult to resolve.

Today the Housing Dept held a barbeque out front of my joint for all us residents in celebration of the renovations being completed. A crowd of pensioners, drug retards and alchos crowded around to snuffle up their free sausages and poor Eric sat at a distance on his milk crate watching with alienated pathos, the outcast who'll never join the human race, in fact we want him carted away to a nursing home where he'll get proper care, not eating out of the dumpster as he does here. His tongue hangs from his twisted mouth purple-brown, like a slug from outer space, it's sickening to see, I feel compassion but am driven to my wits end.

I ran away from the barbecue, from the smell of the burning meat, Eric's extruding invasive tongue and the milling gronks small-talking about the quality of the sausages. I'm the classic anti-social rebel, more of an outsider than Eric the berserker, I rode off sneakily on my bike, all my neighbours wondering, "What's that fucker's problem? Too good for us?" I find it so hard to mill with the 'group', it's so much more relaxing to be off on my own trip, a loner, recluse, individualist, wanker, it's enough that I visit the Piccolo Dickolo Cafe when I feel the need to gossip; also I nurse my fellow humans thru the dark of the night for a job, and then I go to the movies with my best friend for cheap thrills. I'm possibly as mad as the next dingbat, whatever turns me on, I suppose! Living in Northcott is like being surrounded by X-Men.

Yeah, I saw "X-Men 3" last night, a let down for all the anticipation. I'm getting thoroughly sick of comic-book movies, they're just so silly and unreal, good vs. evil with a big punch-up at the end, the same macho fist-fight ad nauseum at the end of every movie. Hugh Jackman, in the orgasmic climax with Famke, with a cyclonic wind blowing, should've lost his pants with the rest of his clothing as he tried to climb on top of her hot tornado self, that would've made it more fun. I'd like to make a porno send-up, "XXX-Men" with a character called 'Cocksucker' who, with the wiggle of a few fingers, all surrounding men's flies zip open and their dicks flop out, or the "Butthole Surfer" where with the wave of a hand everyone bends over, their pants split and their sweet little rosebuds get exposed.

At least I forgot my worries for a few hours and when the sun came up I got a phone call, a job I'd been chasing had fallen into my lap, only on weekends, not too big a strain, and double pay, perfect for this larrikin layabout, so the wheel of fortune can turn, I was truly blessed at that fabulous concert, "Shock of the Sacred" the other night at the Opera House, and my dream-guide dog is leading me in the right direction it seems. Yay!!!

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Anus Miserabliss.

 Last year, 2005, was so good for me it was foolish to expect to repeat it. I traveled the world, racing thru the jungles of Malaysia, motorbiking to the source of the Ganges at the top of the Himalayas, and trance dancing beside the Arabian Sea in Goa with a close friend; I found a job easily and got good money for the few months my stamina allowed me; I flew to Melbourne twice to visit with my loving family and saw "Sin City" at a drive-in movie theatre; my film "Virgin Beasts" was shown at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival late on a cold, wintry Saturday night, and tho no one came, my family gang of 7 enjoyed it thoroughly; and Kings Cross Library gave me a retrospective of all my outre 'red-light' artworks which pleased me endlessly. I hoped 2006 would be just as rewarding but every moment is different in this Universe, not a snow-flake or dust mote is the same, and just as well, it's the ups and downs of 'Chaos' that make life so fucking interesting.

The wheel of my fortunes crashed upon my head the day I was leaving Bombay on a sleeper bus to attend yet another New Year's Eve party in Goa. I was with a non-friend who I'd let attach himself to me out of sheer loneliness as Goa can be cruel when alone. As we passed a Moslem Cemetary he told me of a Saint buried within who was considered very special by the general populace, whatever the religion. Not only did he grant wishes but somehow 'butter' miraculously exuded from his crypt and mummified body, which people gladly carried away to rub into themselves. Francis had such a dopey look of gullible, superstitious stupefaction on his mug that I couldn't help laughing at him, and his demonic angel's face turned sour as he told me I was now cursed for laughing at such a serious, hallowed phenomena, and I would surely soon get some bad luck.

I couldn't help but grimace in turn for I felt Francis all by his self would set out to screw me to fulfill his dire prediction. In Goa he was Hell as a companion, dour and incommunicative, dumping me at every occasion to hang with his Christian friends tho ever demanding I pay his way, and he ate like a hippopotamus, he was rude to my Goan friends and had the pig-like Goan cops ever on his heels for he looked shifty to them, and so the ogres also eye-balled me, which ruined my partying. This non-friend was not my lover, so don't get that idea, I wanted a traveling companion and I made the wrong choice. He ended up searching my room and robbing me of some money, thankfully not all, and fucking off with his creepy friends, much to my relief as I was glad to get him out of my life. But the Goan party scene crashed, my other friends split and I spent a miserable time alone, tho it's still nice to lie back on the beaches and eat cheap sea food.

Later on in my sojourn other non-friends betrayed me, Indians in general got on my nerves with their constant pushing, shoving and grasping so that I fled back to Auz earlier than I'd planned, the magic of the Land of Spiritual cleansing having worn off, for I was about to mulch down into the dust of the swampy Indian streets. And in Auz I've found it impossible to find the work I want, money is thin on the ground, few friends have come to my succour, the idea of 'ART' makes me nauseous. I had few hopes for the future, I've nearly done it all and wonder what else is there? Francis' 'Curse of the Muslim Saint' seemed to be operating on my fate, except I'm just not superstitious and really believe that things happen because fucked up humans make them happen, and I can use my brains and guts to overcome whatever shit is thrown my way. And there's often something waiting just around the corner to turn the Wheel of Fortune back in my favour, all I've got to do is stay alive for it.

That special something happened last night. I went to a concert at that Temple of Culture, the Sydney Opera House; it was called "The Shock of the New" and could have been called "The Shock of the Sacred" for it was 2 hours of eclectic sacred music that totally blew my trivial inconsistencies away and reunited my soul with the Universe. It started with the Gyuto Monks of Tibet chanting to set the mood, then Varese's explosive "Arcana", with Mozart's Requiem interspersed throughout the program; the TaikOz Japanese drumming troupe banging away thunderously; Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" with fawns leaping in my heart; ethereal choirs ullulating; a violin sonata zipping my heart-strings; William Barton playing traditional didgeridoo with verve and humour; minimalist organ, cello and oboe pieces, and ending with Beethoven's "Symphony No.5 Finale. I cried my soul out, it was the best concert I've ever been to and I've been to plenty over the years, from Mahler's 6th to Beethoven's 9th, from The Cramps to the Stones, from Ray Charles to Screaming Jay Hawkins, Pink Floyd to PIL, and last night, just when I thought there couldn't be anything more to turn me on, I swooned with ecstasy all over again.

It took that hard-arsed, bright eyed brass monkey of a city, Sydney, to yet show me life can be special, a city usually so cruel, full of the wailing ghosts of convicts and aborigines, and failed immigrants who floundered on it's frothy shores, like me, a poor boy from the Housing ghettos of Melbourne, and yet equal with whoever was in that hallowed hall last night, for Amaria, Arthur and I had front row seats, as if the Universe had decided to give me a break and show me love, and get me to forget my miserable year for a few hours, encourage me to struggle on, for today is sunny, people seem sweet and life feels good, and I thank nogod for music!

Dream Dog.

Dreams, it seems to me, really do reveal the health of one's "Mind", and disturbed dreams hint at a disturbed person, obviously. Last night "DOG" came to me again, to assuage my anxieties. First I wandered into a hidden, Utopianist community wherein I could find sanctuary and empathy, a haven of like-minded, social-alternative types, they lived in grass huts and tee-pees, hidden in a jungle, below a busy freeway, I guess suggesting that this sympathetic enclave is here in our midst all the while, all I have to do is seek it out with my discerning third eye, a community of the heart, maybe people who feel they don't need so many consumer luxuries at such great cost, not that I want to go native.

Then I was to go on an adventure, over the mountains to a site of great mystique, protectively carrying a baby, my vulnerable, pristine innocent soul. Ahead, near my mountain path, was a hut in which I glimpsed prowling, a dog. I was afraid it might be vicious, a wolf, and my"baby" was in danger. As I edged past the hut I put the baby down upon the grass to confront the dog if it was aggressive. I risked the baby, to see if the dog would attack it, testing that dog, for what could be more fragile and easy meat than an innocent babe? But the dog curled up at my feet, totally trustworthy, loving and vulnerable itself, waiting for my masterly decision, to hurt or to caress. I picked the dog up by it's scruff and looked into it's doleful eyes, it yelped and begged for my succor, it was not my enemy, it was my friend and guide, cute, natural, animal, my companion, not my enemy. And thus I continued on my dream quest, the dog at my side, baby snuggled safely at my heart.

My fear, distrust and rough-handling of the dog seems to indicate to me that I'm not so confident, capable, loving, equanimous, whatever, in my unconscious. The day my whole body/mind complex is at peaceful, loving oneness with the Universe, with nothing to hate or fear, then I will, in my dream sojourns, call out to that dog, welcome it's presence, with clear sight to where I'm going, have it run to me and leap upon me with love, and I will laugh with glee, clearly know my guide is ready and capable of taking me thru any 'valleys of shadow' my Unconscious may throw in my way. I'm not there yet, got a long way to go, but I'm working on it, it's good to have ideals. Universal compassion is the key. Dogs are great, especially in the heart.

(Reading this a year later it comes across as "hippie psycho-babble" but in writing a portrait of the PUNK POOFY CAT I'm trying to reveal some of the strange facets of his troubled existence, weird dream life and cosmic mumbo-jumbo philosophising included, it's all part of being a mixed up, cool crazy cat who can even take on opposites like dogs and still not be contradictory, more like a flawed "human".)

Ayesha Rules OK!

 
Every time I go to meet my fellow curmudgeons at the Pick-Your-Nose Cafe I get a juicy story to laugh over, human behaviour being so pathetically absurd these third millenium days. Ayesha, the infamous drag queen, came swishing in with a macrome shawl over her head as if she were a Chinese madonna, hissing at the latest schitzo wreck mumbling to himself at an outside table, she hated to be so downfallen that she had to be seen near such human detritus. I was bitching about a doco I'd seen last week on TV, "The Protocols of the Order of Sion", badmouthing Jews for all of history's disasters. The Grand Master of Curmudgeonville, Vitto, proprietor of the Shoe-box Psycho-drama Theatre, has a huge photo of Mel Gibson on the wall, declaring his undying love for the Catholic mega-fascist, and I related how in the doco Mel and his rabid Catholic preacher of a father gave a nasty rant about "the horrid Jews who killed Christ", how ugly they were, how ignorant and vicious, all of which Vitto wouldn't listen to, even tho Mel would shoot him against the wall as an egregious poof if given the power.

Ayesha grandiloquently announced, like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, that there was a night she could've had Mel but she'd knocked him back. Ayesha's claim to fame is that she was one of the original line-up of female impersonators wowing the confused, ribald gronks at Les Girls Night Club on the Cross, even touring the redneck red-desert outback with the troupe on which the film "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" is based. Umpteen years later she's aged and dotty, like many of us survivors of the 20th century gay wars, and still swoons about like a legend of the silver screen tho slowly devolving into entropic dissolution and mania, i.e. falling to bits in front of us, occasionally fainting out on the footpath and being heaved home, her drag finery torn and soiled. I sceptically asked her to tell me about Mel and with Asian eyes turned to the heavens, she related the night 25 years ago when she strode grandly down the staircase of the Bourbon and Beefsteak Hotel into the basement bar to espy a crowd of sycophants gathered around a guy in a Hawaiin hibiscus-print shirt.

She was so eye-sore marvelous in a strapless gold lame evening gown, gold high-heel shoes and hair swept into a tidal wave, the crowd couldn't help but take the focus off Mel and zero it onto her magnificence. Mel turned to discover what the distraction could be, and being drunk as a skunk, thought he was looking at a real live woman. He tried to chat her up with his loud American drawl, being a notorious fucker in those days, he screwed any pussy that meowed at him. She ignored him and flounced to the other end of the bar and Mel couldn't resist staggering thru the tables, knocking everyone over, to get to her and slur how he'd like to buy this gorgeous, golden gal a drink. She turned her nose up at him and announced, "Go away Mel, you're too drunk for me. I'm a lady, the real thing baby, not one of your one night hussies!" To which he dribbled disbelief and wandered off for the pussy posse to pounce on him like mosquitoes on a bleating bull-calf, to suck his blood and give him delirious Melaria, I imagine, from his subsequent Messiahnic delusions.

Ayesha looked at me with all seriousness, "Yes, I could've had him that night, he was mine for the taking." "Oh yeah, and you'd be proud to be just another arse-wipe for that ego-maniac I suppose, along with the hordes of other fame-whores?" Ayesha has the hide of an armadillo, she just threw her proud head in the air as if such comments were below her, she's had her 15 nano-seconds of fame and she was dining out on them ad infinitum. She was a wonderfully entertaining member of the Curmudgeon's Club and I laughed heartily at her grandiose sentiments, Drags are always good for a giggle, tho I wouldn't want to live with one, too much heart-breaking drama.

Surfing the Breakdowns.

Oh shit, I think I just had a mini nervous breakdown, my will has crumbled, my verve splattered, my desires evaporated, I dont want to commit any more. I rang the boss at Murderith House and had a bitch fight with her about the lousy nursing standards she encouraged so I won't get work with her again. Then I had a job interview with the Salvation Army, of all people, but chickened out at the last minute as I bet they get the bottom-of-the-barrel derelicts to nurse, old winos one would have to chase around all night, and who would fall to bits at the touch. I've got a paranoid intuition the Salvos would be martinets to work for, shouting marching orders thru megaphones with brass bands wailing, and I'm the last soul to be salvaged for Christ on the hill. These days I love to lie in my bed late at night and meditate on the infinite universe, to drift off to multifarious adventures in dreamland, and I hate to wake up to the real world, tho I should just change my attitude and take reality on as a marvelous challenge, for attitude is everything.

Depression is a tough disability to get on top of, it seems to seep from one's very cellular structure. Things are not so bad for me, I get to loll about reading books and watching movies much of the time, or ride my bike thru the brisk rain, a few moments of ebullience at being alive, a spoilt western consumer and bratty nihilist, tho Govt. handouts are a pathetic means of support. I guess I have to apologise that my Blogs overall come across as negative, whingeing bitch raves. It's not only the injustice of a money-worshiping class bound world that shits me, I simply find human society absurd, see satire and farce in all the posturing and pomposity, and excuse myself with the fact that it's negative ions that get us high. (And I'm not the only one, having just read W. Somerset Maughn's "The Narrow Corner", his protagonist also finds human society absurd and is entertained by their antics whilst dwelling with them in the gutter.)

An impossibly long series of accidents led to ME, multiple universes churning in and out of existence till the right universe could produce my consciousness, just the right physics that allowed matter to clump and galaxies to form, and of all galaxy types, the Milky Way being spiral and rotating with the solar system a safe distance from the galactic centre, out on a spiral arm in a pocket of empty space that reduces bombardment from cosmic debris, the earth just the right distance from the sun, neither too hot or cold, and single cell life evolving, evolving, one weird creature morphing into the next, just enough meteors crashing and wiping out lifeforms to make room for the next till ape-men got up and walked, and of all the hominid families homo sapiens finally get to take over.

And thousands of years of my ancestors fucking and surviving wars and plagues miraculously till now there's me, threshing about on my bed, planning on suicide one dark day when I've finished writing this twenty-one thousand page suicide note. And when I'm dead the Universe will wink out of existence, and as far as I'm concerned, you all won't exist any more, after all that eternal travail, Nothingness will take over, so you better hope I hang in there for awhile, because you won't exist when I'm dead.

Who wants to live until they're seventy? A sixty-nine year old! Oh crazed Universe, give me at least one year longer, there's always a new adventure around the corner waiting to happen, more knowledge to be realised, it just takes the right attitude to keep going.

My Desperate Flesh.

What is any tale of existential ennui without sex? Yet it's difficult to talk about sex, so intimate, so personal, I'm not just afraid my family will read it, I don't even want my friends to know the horror I go thru. Old age is ugly but it gets even uglier when the libido rears it's one-eyed snake's head, especially when everyone looks thru you like a cracked piece of glass. Yet sex is at the centre of the soul's maelstrom and the picture is incomplete without it, so I must gird my loins and confess the misadventures of the flesh I am prone to.

Many a portrait has tried to cover-up the sordid details of "other" sexuality, such as "The Boy from Oz" where Peter's egregious faggy activities get glossed over in the rush to eulogise his bullshit marriage to Liza and song and dance routines, for in the mainstream world homos are still declasse, THEY even get Hets to portray them in theatre as the real thing is too much . But I'll try to be a bit more honest than that, tho too much confession only brings opprobrium.

Sydney has long been a ribald homo city, from convict days when there were few women, and then as the major pirate/sailor South Seas port where the homo action has been thick and fast. For the young there are the countless bars and clubs where they chat up and liase with no holds barred but for the oldies, say past forty, there's very little except desperate trawling of faceless internet chatrooms, dark parks and badly lit sex-shop backrooms. On Saturday night the urge for sex suddenly swept up from my crotch to my limbic system like an out of control Kundalini force and I wandered the streets of the inner-city at a loss as to how to satisfy the compulsion. Yet another fantasy movie was not gonna do it for me, I needed something tangible and so I turned in the direction of the Chinatown Bath-house, even tho my few previous visits were a frustrating let-down, for no one there likes me and I don't like them.

I demurely kept on my T-shirt as I wrapped a towel around my naked decrepitude and crept up the slippery stairs to view the whirlwind of try-hard sex addicts and lonesome doves. The crowd were either sallow-skinned Asians looking for the great white fuck, who having left their eye-glasses in their lockers, rushed continuously up and peered myopically into one's face, then ran away in disappointment, over and over till I felt like slapping the next squinting face that got in mine. Or they were geriatric white guys, huge, sagging bellies, bald, grey and wrinkled, stooped and bejowelled, toddling laboriously up and down the three levels, ever on the move, rarely seeming to settle, never finding Mr.Right, around and around, dizzy and lost.

When I tried to walk about I would constantly bump into someone in the tight, dark corridors and feel their clammy flesh against mine, and I'd shudder and push past, trying to find somewhere to sit to get out of the whirlpool of frustration. And when I did find a refuge, unbeknownst to me, I sat near a glory hole and a wet, disembodied hand came out of nowhere and grabbed me on the tit so that I shouted in fright and slapped the hand away, it flapped like a beached fish before withdrawing and I moved on, looking for impossible sanctuary in this shit-hole of Utopianist sexual freedom, disco music thumping thru-out like a demented orchestra from Hell.

Then over a loudspeaker a voice roared, "It's nudie night for nubile naughties, fling off your towels! The doors will be locked in 7 minutes and there will be no escape, so get ready for the ultimate in flabulous fun!" Towels dropped to the floor, every freak was suddenly exposed in all their unaesthetic horror, each body more lumpen gross than the next, no perfect athletes here, and no shame, a free-for-all orgy in the making, good luck to those who wanted it but it was not my cup of tea, so I fled, not up for feeling heaps of clammy, flabby flesh piled onto mine. And I just made it thru the doors as they clanged shut, like the Pearly Gates for some desperadoes but giving off a sulfurous whiff of Purgatory for me.

I found myself on the floor of the Swedish dry sauna downstairs, pitch black, unloved and unbidden but safe and at rest. At least I could sweat out some toxins, and there was always the fantasy movie showing in the Cafe theatre, "Beach Party Psycho", reflecting the milieu of the bath-house I guess, but with no real, tangible flesh to come apart in one's hands in this sweat-box. I watched it for a few minutes, too silly and camp even for a fuckwit like me, and so I left, as frustrated as ever but glad to have escaped. I had 7 boyfriends here in Sydney once, but they grew old with me and dropped away or dropped dead, a few call in on me in a blue moon, usually I'm not up for it but the attention is nice. Saturday was an amazing full moon night and I howled like a were-wolf as I rode my daggy push-bike home, I was better off masturbating to get rid of the tension, that's all there is about it.
 

Beware the Wrath of the Punk Poofy Cat.

 
Beware the wrath of the Punk Poofy Cat as he's been known to burn down barns, just like "Carrie" when she got pig's blood thrown in her face. I've got nowhere else but blogging to vent my spleen, making complaints to higher authorities is useless, no one listens to the whinging underlings, bosses can get away with murder, all in the name of PROFIT. Thus I have more tales of terror to tell from "The Industry of Dying." I'm annoyed with Murderith House, the nursing home that sometimes calls me in as relief nurse. The uptight Matron has excluded me because I dared to question her hiring practices, bringing in expensive agency nurses instead of in-house relief nurses like me, they cost twice as much, do half the work, and care not a fig for the dying residents. She had to take a few days off for some kind of emergency so the deputy matron called me in to replace the young Phillipino girl who's always coming down with asthma, nogod knows why she's still employed, she's always on sick leave. (Staff gossip tells me she's the Matron's niece.)

 Nursing homes are cash-cows for whoever gets a hold of them. This particular night I discover the expensive agency nurse who got the really lucrative weekend shift had done no work at all, none of the reports so I can't figure out what's been going on in the joint, or the status of the deteriorating patients, nor very little actual nursing, wounds with old dressings, pressure sores worsening, not even medications given. I'm told he lay in a chair and slept all night, the old, ailing residents be dammed, he couldn't give a shit! I found poor old Katie, the 80 year old dementia sufferer, worked up into a lather, the door of her room barricaded with furniture, with her Downs Syndrome daughter wailing, hiding behind her, peeping in fear over her shoulder, both panic stricken because they thought they were under attack by decrepit strange men who they saw roaming about the corridors for the last few nights, perhaps trying to trespass into their room and out to rape them, such were their fears. I soothed their shattered nerves, assured them I was there to protect them, and got them back into bed.

I found poor sweet Henrietta wandering the corridors at 2am, dressed and carrying her packed bags, lost, distraught, wanting to go home, not knowing who or where she was, and I had to reassure her, get her back into bed, bags unpacked, for she was going nowhere, she had no home except this dump. Then I discovered fat old Pammy stuck in her bed was bleeding from a pressure blister that should have been found two days previously, she'd not been repositioned enough and is thus suffering from pressure sores. Throughout the night I found this type of neglect was repeated with many residents, for when the nurse sleeps, suffering humanity goes without painkillers, wanders the freezing corridors lost or lie stiff in their soiled nappies crying out alone in the dark, scared of the flitting ghosts that swirl around the ancient witch's cottage that is Murderith House. All this goes on every night all over Sydney while the good citizens sleep, the oldies in the nursing homes are quickly bumped off.

The Matron doesn't seem to give too big a shit about the aging Aussie residents, for they're all expected to die sometime anyway, nobody will notices if they die a bit earlier, she just has her eye on milking the joint like a tired cash cow. When I got back to my apartment after a hard night's work I was uptight, going to sleep tense about conditions at the nursing home, sending the dead-fish-eye Matron a tight white hot beam of chaos/antipathy, even when I didn't mean to. And I held up a polished shield, as if facing the deadly gaze of the Medusa, any beams of stone-hard hate coming back to me would be deflected back again to her. And it seems my caustic vibes worked as the shit Private Agency she always hired has gone into receivership, owing $1 million in back taxes. It seems the money-grubbing uncaring Matron was a partner in the business, and will go down with it if she doesn't watch her arse. I realised that's why she often hired them, especially for the weekend shifts, as she got a cut of their expensive rates. If you worship gods like Mammom, when such false idols eventually crash, they can fall onto and crush their acolytes.

But this materialistic world is not just or fair, the dead-eyed slouch will be back at work tomorrow, she'd taken the week off to deal with her Agency crisis, and she'll notice I got hired without her say-so, and I'll never go to Murderith House again if she can help it, for she'll be trying to milk the place for as much cash as she can to pay off her debts, and will probably start a new Agency to achieve her greedy goal. Greed is the ruling ethos: businessmen, politicians, doctors, even priests, most lost souls suffer from it, it turns everyone green. And late at night, instead of treading the ice-cold corridors, I'll thresh about in my warm bed, aghast at the horrors of the 21st century and the industry of Dying, happy to take a rest, too bad about being broke and hopeless.

The Tooth Fairy.

Serves me right for being the eternal cheapskate. I was too tight to fork out $200 to have a painful, decayed tooth pulled by a private, avuncular dentist so I took codeine for 7 weeks till I could weazle into the Public Dental Hospital where they do it for free. What a freak parade, every bum and their dog there to get free treatment, the poor perennially having rotten teeth.

I was confronted by a punk with green hair looking like Johnny Rotten's unacknowdged grandchild; squads of Euro-trash, broken-hipped and hobbling with walking sticks, gossiping about the bad treatment banks mete out to them; swarms of ancient Asian couples clinging to each other in uncomprehending terror, totally lost, as if they've just fled the Forbidden City and are facing Mongol barbarians; an old rocker in a worn leather jacket, now tired and broken, surrendering to the contingencies of straight society; a moronic guy and his two girlfriends, drug-fucked hipsters in pseudo grunge gear, thinking they're trendy but just looking like real fucking idiots, repeating over and over long lists of drugs they can and can't take while having their teeth pulled; and one lone butch transexual in low-low cut jeans, flabby belly and pube-line exposed, hoping she's sexy but actually tragic, deep-throat croaking she had to be seen immediately, then storming out in a huff when told to come back in 3 months. Even the counter-staff seemed on some equal opportunity break for the disabled and mentally challenged, doing their duties in slow motion with squinty eyes, pretending not to notice the whining mob in front of them.

Then out came the young Asian dentist, real cute, to shake my hand, patronisingly sweet, to lead me thru the swinging doors and into tooth fetishist's heaven, past an army of young male and female dentists lolling about like spunks in a white, sanitary harem, any one of them could put their fingers in my mouth any time. I was taken to a reclining chair where a good-looking Scottish doctor commiserated with me over the horror of my Nosferatu-like teeth. I was asked my health status 3 separate times, all afraid of catching STDs I suppose.

The needle in the gums was excruciatingly more painful than any tooth rip, I drummed my feet and moaned till the cute Asian guy had to lean against me therapeutically to assuage my agony. He stuck it in deep, wrenched it about, the needle seemed to poke thru the top of my head, I flashed on the truth, he was an apprentice dentist, the Scottish overseer was his teacher, the cutie was practicing on me and he didn't know what he was doing. Then he set in to yank out the canine, tougher than a vampire's fang to extract, twisting, pulling, shoving, screwing, dragging, eternally on and on.

I squirmed and breathed heavily, again he leant against me, and I fantasised I could feel his cock slowly stiffening, pressing against my hand that was clutching the arm-rest. While I was thus pre-occupied the tooth came out without my hardly knowing it, no squawking or blood, I got a hearty pat on the back for my stoicism. With my whole head throbbing I gladly fled past the seraglio of toothsome dentist spunks and the long-suffering crowd of toothless freaks in the waiting room, so regretting I was a lazy bastard as a kid, taking no notice of my parents admonitions, and never brushing my teeth.

Lucifer's Little Turncoat.

Ever day I chase jobs, the last time responding to a newspaper add that stated "small Christian nursing home wants nurse". I caught the train to middle-suburbia , trudged past many city blocks, each with its resident home for the aged, until I came to a pharoahnic edifice refurbished like the Ritz Carlton with plush foyer and beauty pageant receptionist. I had to fill out the employment application whilst waiting for the jovial Director of Nursing, who laughed heartily on the phone at my every question and thus promised a happy workplace.

I kept one eye on the oldies toddling out to waiting taxis with their walking frames, so fragile and baby-innocent in their wrinkled, skeletal benign souls, a breath of wind or a harsh word could blow them to kingdom come, and I had to ask myself, as ever, do I myself want to hang on into decrepitude, only to eat milksops and be at the mercy of a cruel, rapacious world that will earn money from my slow dying?

On my application form was the question "Religion?" Out of sheer libertarian perversity I was tempted to write "Satanist!" It all just seemed so godly clean and sanitised but I wanted the job desperately and so I wrote, mealy-mouthed, "Christian", for that is what I got baptised when a baby, without me having my twisted will involved. Actually, I was Christened a Lutheran as my cheapskate parents, in the tough early 1950's, found they could sneak me in to a Baptism at the local Lutheran Church where they were doing a deal, two for the price of one, and so they didn't have to pay for me.

I've been a cheapskate ever since with "if it's for free, it's for me" as my reigning philosophy. Actually, I'm not a Satanist, as in the sense of black magic, pentagrams, sacrifice and mumbo jumbo, those black-dressed types seem a bunch of superstitious fuck-wits to me, but I am a Luciferian, in the sense of Anatole France's "Revolt of the Angels", Lucifer, the Angel of Light ruling this earthly domain, rebelling against a cruel, vindictive, jealous, tyrannical Heavenly Father, Light and enlightenment being the chief motif in my heart's desire, not that I ever find it, but I'm always searching.

So the DON finally appears, only to tell me the job involves looking after 76 residents with a lock-down ward of fifteen dementia sufferers and next door a hostel with a further 70 residents to whom I'll have to occasionally run when they've had a fall or a flip-out. Lots of nappy changing 4 times a night plus peg-feeds (feeding tubes into stomachs) and BSLs, bood-sugar tests for the diabetics, as well as chasing the demented about, who on their own are a nerve-wracking handful. She laughed merrily all the while, telling me the place is owned by the church next door and is run on strict Christian values, but they don't mind a bit of slave labour from the nurses in the glorious name of profit.

When I said 76 plus was an awful lot to be responsible for, she assured me that nurses would soon be phased out of the aged care industry anyway, the lot handed over to assistants, so I'd be lucky if I got the job. I grimly smiled and said we should both think about it, but it's another back-breaker in the industry of dying that I would have to decline, and I toddled away to hide under my blankets at home, happy to sleep away the fear and horror. And to think I was willing to betray the Angel of Light for mere filthy lucre?? What a scandal!

The Horror Shlockometer.

Art can have the ability to send those who appreciate it into transports of joy and wonder and none more-so than film which combines so many art-forms, literature, photography, acting, costume, music etc, but above all, lighting, for film is luminous, light shines thru it and into the viewers soul. I've been movie-crazy since a kid, escaping the mundane horrors of the adult world to lose myself in their dream-like formats, wagging school constantly to sneak into the city and see the latest on the big-screens. I go at least once a week, either to see high-art/international cinema and or pop-culture/Hollywood sclock-busters. I was reminded of the transcendental potential of film last night whilst watching "Whale Rider", for I got very high, uplifted to a higher plane of beauty when the girl rode the stranded whale out to sea.

But there is one genre that I very much relish yet it gets ignored or put down by the high-art movie critics, I'm referrig to 'horror/fantasy'. Much of the latest releases don't even rate a mention, too low-brow and below artistic considerations. I think there should be a whole other rating regime for 'horror/sci-fi', and separate shows on TV to review them, appealing to horror freaks/heads, ignoring the high-art Grand Poobahs of film criticism.

And instead of the 10 star treatment I propose a little machine somewhat akin to the 'strength-gauge' machines at Carnivals: one can hit a weight with a hammer and watch it ascend a totem pole setting off lights and bells, one ding for every classic element expected in the 'horror' genre: good-looking protagonists, edge of seat suspense, blood splatter, gross-out nausea, ugly monster, sheer terror thrill ride, flesh crawling horror, imaginative plot, creative imagery, rock'n'roll/soundscape. I'd call this machine "The Shlockometer" and when applying it to the movie I saw on Friday night, "Final Destination 3", it gets "ding! ding! ding! ding! ding! ding!! = 6 Dings.

Not just me, the rest of the packed theatre moaned and groaned, yelped and whelped, squished and squelched at the ingenious ways the disembodied force of 'Death' bumped off the pretty young protagonists, one freak accident leading to another, and then another, an unlikely series of events tumbling over like dominoes, us the audience following the trail that eventually leads to the squashing of a life-loving beauty, it had me clutching my seat with perverse, tense excitement. While the movie is the third in a popular franchise and thus is not original, it was done with great panache, better computer graphics etc. For example, the opening out-of-control roller coaster ride and crash was a real hair-raiser. The theme to me had existential depths, death the final destination for all of us, life in this world a transient phenomena, so we better get used to the fact. That, I suspect, is why there's all these crazy, superstitious religions ruling this planet, everybody is so shit scared of dying.

Why do I like horror movies so much? Maybe I identify with the protagonist who survives at the end, rehearsing all the skills needed for that survival. Or they console me as good metaphors for contemporary living, nothing can be nastier than real life, television news reports and human history. Maybe I can wank and say they're like the spiritual disciplines of Buddhists and Hindus where monks and sadhus sit by and meditate upon corpses in the charnal grounds and crematoriums, reminding oneself not to take this material world too seriously, that all things of the flesh come to an end, and it might be possible to transcend such limitations.

But then I'm back to crazy religions and I'm too rational to even believe in "reincarnation" or "after-lives", the joys and horrors of this life are enough and you have to enure yourself to all the ups and downs, otherwise you'd go mad. I sure dug walking out of the cinema while the rock soundtrack thumped, happy to be alive and thriving, the wind and rain in my face, with still a few more years of adventures to enjoy, maybe.