78) Betrayal.

I just broke out of FaceBook gaol and can now tell the world of my stalker’s harassment. FB cut off their nose to spite their face, they did me a big favour by banning me for a month as they gave me a break from their terrible digital addiction. I’ve been able to breathe the fresh air of non-participation in what often works out to be a public lynch-mob of human disaffection, social alienation, political assassination and artistic bombast.

I’m being stalked by a monster who insulted me continuously online with the brain-dead tag of “wanker” in comments on every one of my posts, particularly those to do with my art and my latest book, “Punk Outsider.” I’ll call him Bawl as he was always bawling over something or someone. When I finally flipped out at his insults and replied to his put-downs, as he knew I would, I was accused of bullying him and thrown into gaol, such is FB’s moronic algorithm. 

For 30 years this creep declared I was his best friend, he praised my artistic efforts to the heavens, I was the best thing since they put holes in Swiss cheese. And I fell for it, when I thought I was impervious to such sycophantic flattery, he’d snuck up on me like a huge, hungry leach and has been sucking up the little charisma I had, because he doesn’t have any. In fact he has sub-zero attraction for anyone, no matter how scraggy his female suckers are, as inside his shit-bag bulk he is a truly ugly man.

In my world view one of the worst acts of flawed humanity is betrayal. It is the default response of the weak, unstable, deranged and mean. Like most of us, some worse than others, I have been plagued by betrayal my entire life. My father betrayed me as a child, beating me and my mother mercilessly. My acquaintances throughout my youth and journey into adulthood betrayed me because of my supposed “sissyness.” Society in general tortured me due to my queer sexuality, I was unable to keep a job, rent a room or sustain a loving relationship. Politically I was betrayed by a system that favoured the rich, the elite from “good" schools, and by our cruel, neo-fascist leaders who seem to enjoy trashing the poor, the worker and the different while lauding and rewarding the rich and the conforming. My stalker knew all this and twisted the knife in my back even harder.

Betrayal smacks of not just sadism but also jealousy, a truly nasty emotion. So many flakes suffer from it, resenting anyone with talent, anyone who achieves beyond expectations, anyone who lifts themselves from the gutter and contributes their heart to the world. Or they’re so full of themselves, it’s all they can see, other’s troubles and struggles uninteresting and invisible to them, for they are creepy sociopaths. 

For the 3 years after I was falsely accused of armed hold-up by corrupt pigs in 1993 I went to several of my “leftie” compatriots to get help, people I’d been arrested with in civil disobedience actions on their direction and in their company. These political stunts were put on my criminal record and the pigs used them as proof of my criminal character. After 7 seconds of my pleading for assistance from my "leftie" comrades I was blown off in mid-sentence, their backs turned on me, I was not a cause celebre, I was merely a nobody working-class fag. This cut me to the heart.

Yet of all these betrayals a recent one has been the most devastating, the shock of it worse than a broken leg, a police-frame-up or a comrade’s indifference. I had this “best friend” for 30 years, he came every Thursday night to take me shopping, to laugh and chat over a cup of tea, and play guitar beside me many times when I had a story-telling gig. Every Thursday he came because that was the day he habitually went to the chemist to get his dose of Buprenorphin, an opioid he was addicted to so that he could avoid heroin. He’s been doing this for around 12 years, before that it was methadone, and before that he was a wicked skag junkie for 25 years. He’d shot up once to three times a day for all those years; think about it, the amount of poison flooding through his system truly turned him toxic, compared to me who has never shot up even once!

He’d told me on many occasions that every time a junkie nodded off he/she killed a million neurons, and every time they had an OD they lost seven million neurons, thus they were brain-damaged and, sadly, didn’t even know it. He had one of the most boring speech impediments, saying at the end of every sentence “you know what I mean?” He had the most nauseating of habits, he constantly picked his nose and dropped the bits of snot onto my lounge-room floor as he blabbed an interminable diatribe against society and everybody he knew. I had to vacuum the floor where he sat after he left. It made me ill and I was dying to tell him to stop it only his bulk and irascible nature intimidated me. 

He particularly had it in for the three women he’d had relationships with in his life, constantly telling me what bitches they were, their stupidity, their thieving the horse they’d scored together and the money they’d stiffed from him, their behaviour equal to the three evil Macbeth witches. Maya, Hellen, and Cursula, they were all to blame for his downfall.

I’d stupidly introduced him to Cursula as I knew both of them were lonely and needed a good fuck. She lived next door to me, her door faced mine and she always left it open so that I could hear whatever was going on in her flat. She had been sexually abused as a child by her hippie mother’s deadbeat boyfriends and was a psychic mess. She soaked up abuse like a sponge, life wasn’t normal unless some toxic male was emotionally torturing her, and Bawl was the worst of them all. After three days of fucking him she confessed she had thirty thousand dollars stashed, from an inheritance, an art’s grant scam and from selling her methadone.

He must’ve thought, “Beautie mate! This’ll do me, I get a juicy fuck any time I want it, she’ll wait on me hand and foot cooking and cleaning up after me, and I can get my heroin stone as much as I want for the foreseeable future.” They then proceeded to shoot up two to three times a day for the next few months till all the money was gone. Then the abuse set in with a vengeance. And I could hear it all through the open door and thin walls.

His verbal attacks were atrocious in the extreme. A girlfriend was sitting with me one day and heard it all and she snarled to me, “That guy is a total bastard! Do you hear what he’s saying to her? I will never talk or even look at him again! What a monster!” 

An example of the tirade, which I reported in my story, “Under Northcott”, is “You fucking cunt! You’re fucking evil! No wonder I don’t want to fuck you any more! You’re a piece of shit!” She’d whine in response, “Oh Bawl. I only suggested you have vegemite on your toast instead of jam. And give me my money, you owe me thirty thousand dollars! GIVE ME MY MONEYYYY!!”

I got to know Bawl’s family. He had no childhood trauma that I could fathom. His parents were peacefully in love his whole life. They never spanked him even once and gave him everything he wanted. Their house is, in my eyes, palatial, in a quiet dead-end street in Lane Cove by the river, a virtual paradise. He went to a “good” school, even though it was Catholic. He had a wonderful elder sister, intelligent, kind and loving. But it seems they all enabled his spoiled brat behaviour

I myself had the most traumatic childhood imaginable and still got on top of it, it possibly even made me stronger. I absolutely eschewed hard drugs. He knows all this, and still he put the boot in.

About seven weeks ago he’d come on Thursday night for our usual chat and shopping outing, after he’d had his opioid dose at the chemist. We got on famously such as best friends do and at Aldis he bought his weekly bottle of Bourboun, several bottles of wine  and looked forward to the beer he drank at home on top of all this, getting drunk till dawn, every night. The only difference from any other night to that night was he had a bag of his mother’s leftover painkillers. He offered me some valium which I gladly took as an occasional pill did quieten any anxiety I felt, and I duly thanked him for it. He then offered me some Oxycontin, a very heavy opioid that junkies chase relentlessly all over the world as it’s as overwhelming a stone as heroin. I refused it in the strongest terms as the one time I was given a pill of the shit in St.Vincents hospital after my bone-graft operation I was violently ill the entire night.

I suspect he “busted” that night, years off the heaviest of drugs and he couldn’t resist trying just one pill for old times’ sake, then gobbled up quite a few on top of the alcohol and Buprenorphin, a truly deadly cocktail. I’d told him that I hadn’t slept for 3 days and was exhausted. I finally fell into a deep sleep but at 3am I got 3 phone calls which woke me up but which I didn’t answer as I was too zonked out to lift a finger. 

Then in the morning the abuse started. I got a stream of text messages, “You wanker! You cunt! You never say thank you! You never ring me and say, "Hi how you going!" You’re just a bastard wanker!” No god, anyone would think I was his boyfriend, yuk! (I couldn’t think of anything worse.) He kept this up for two days, on the third day I got the message, “Kreep!” I replied, “Have you gone mad? Have you got back on the gear? You’re still a junkie loser after 35 years!” And I was put in FaceBook gaol for bullying him!

He’s probably running around to his old junkie mates and muso connections telling them I’m “a wanker, a cocksucker and a traitor.” No god knows what I’ve done to set off his madness except I have been told that substance abusers often turn on someone close to them to blame for all their failures. 

This is a guy who blew his prospects out his arse when he was 25, never achieved anything, sits around plucking at his guitar thinking he’s Segovia and that the greatest contribution he has made to the world is “pling plang plong!” He’s never initiated one project in all his life, never written one song, never cut a record off his own bat or produced a music gig. He always raved about standing up to the LNP, Christian crusaders and neo-fascists but has never gone on a protest march, printed and handed out flyers or even commented on their online propaganda in FaceBook, not one comment!

I’ve given him paid work in my films and gigs, put him in front of large audiences, promoted him on my flyers and posters. He’s never given me one dollar in paid work, got me the poster job for the music gigs he’s been included in or the CD covers he’s been the session musician for. He’s never had a real job in his life! (Oh yeah, he worked behind the counter in a sex shop for a year, great career.) He’s bludged off Social Security and women his entire life, I doubt he’s ever paid rent, and he ran home to mummy and daddy at the age of 42 where he got free rent, electricity, food, phone and car because he couldn’t cut the mustard out in the real world.

I’ve worked as a palliative care nurse, sitting with hundreds of dying patients for 50 years, with time off when I collapsed from the hard work and sadness of it all. I’ve won 2 world prizes and two Australian prizes for my films. I’ve had many art shows, wall-papered Sydney with my posters, written and published two books, a comic book and many short stories. And this bag of sh#t says I’m a wanker! What a nerve, what madness! 

I can only wonder if he’d found out about the portrait I’d written of him in my latest book “Punk Outsider” though it hadn’t actually come out at the time of his flip out. I’d told him about what I’d said a few years ago when I’d first written it and he said, “That’s OK, that’s what literature and free speech is all about, honest, raw existence.”

To prove how much I trusted him I’d given him the key to my front door and he’d often stayed at my flat when I was out of town. I’d told him where I’d hidden my stash of money that I’d saved over the years from hard work, art sales and gifts so that if I died suddenly he could use it to pay for my funeral. He committed one last ghastly act of betrayal, out of sheer insanity and meanness, a poisonous character he’d hidden inside his overweight bag of shit carcass so that most thought of him as a ”nice, quiet guy." He let himself into my apartment, the only other person with a key to my door, knowing when I wouldn’t be there, and he went for the money, for sure. He knew that would totally destroy me and I couldn’t prove he’d done it.

But I intuited that’s exactly what he’d do so I hid the money somewhere else where he couldn’t find it though he tore the place to bits. Actually I put it in the bank. It must’ve made him furious, he’d been planning on stealing my life savings and having a binge on heroin big enough to kill him, and I kind of wish he’d succeeded. Instead, in a fury, he went to a painting I’d recently created, which he knew I treasured and which I’d already sold, and he slashed it with a knife, destroying it. This is what a vicious maniac he is and probably always was.

If he thinks he can destroy me he’s so far wrong as to reinforce the fact that he is an idiot. I’m way stronger than him, he’s always been as weak as piss. I’ve overcome obstacles, monsters and disasters way more problematic than that sloppy schizo. I’m strong, I’m a warrior, I’m an achiever, everything he’s not. He’s possibly trying to destroy  book, jealous I’d achieved something yet again and he’s achieved nothing, ever, but it’s not possible to destroy "Punk Outsider." The cat is out of the bag, it's gone across Australia and the world, many reading and giving it hot reviews. It will go on to be popular Australian underground Beat literature, I’m sure of it. I’ve always been confident about my talent, it’s why I keep going and put so much effort in. 

I've read 3000 books, seen 12000 movies, witnessed 1001 genius musicians, met and interacted with 49000 people and been around the world 21 times. I've practised writing and drawing, over and over 3 million times. As a late developer I've mulched it all down into one style. Thus I'm going to create interesting art, I hope.

When I begged some “non-friends” to help me promote my books, to buy and read them, they’ve gone silent, they won't help me. I can’t understand why, they wouldn’t wish much of my life on a dog. I’ve reported it many times in my stories, what a struggle, what pain, ignominy and exclusion I've experienced. They couldn’t give a shit, how dare I, a queer bum, write books, create paintings and produce animated musicals, it's just not cricket! This is not a sob story about poor me and dickhead "THEM!" This is simply fact, it‘s why I’ve called my latest tome “Punk Outsider.”

I wonder if it’s not jealousy that causes these “non-friends” to be resentful, unhelpful, naysayers? Jealousy is such an ugly emotion and Sydney particularly suffers from it, full of middle-class kids who for all mummy and daddy’s money can’t come up with cutting edge goods. No matter, I have plenty of true friends whose nature it is to be kind, loving, helpful, just one of them is worth all the fuckwit armchair intellectuals and politico-heroes whose banal activities and flat, old biddy style make hip punters' eyes glaze over. 

Oh yeah, vacuous narcissism is what Bawl accuses me of: after asking me what dramas I’ve got myself into this week and me spilling my guts he says, “Oh you’re always talking about yourself!” 

Yeah well, he’s a boring, mean-spirited loser. I’ve asked those in the music scene if they know him and I draw blank faces, “No, never heard of him.” What a claim to fame, art-slasher! And what a scumbag, achieving a life-long drug habit and spending much of his stoned time rearranging his pathetic comb-over hair-do. Surprise, surprise Bawl, you're a bald, pathetic old man, your rock star days are not only over, they never really ever happened.

I’ve reported him to the police, we’ve gone through the videos the Security guards here in Northcott take with cameras on every building and doorway and we’ve caught Bawl the monster entering my flat. They’ve asked me if I want to press charges and I’ve said, “No, only if he comes near me again.” Actually, I’d like to slash his ugly face like he slashed my painting. I can paint that work again, he can never repair his twisted soul. He’s a weak coward and would be sitting at home, getting drunk, shit scared the cops will come knocking at his door at any moment. Fuck the fat slob!

To all you artsholes, celebrity boot-lickers and faux activists sneering right now, I’ve left a telling, entertaining record of crazily splendiferous visions and razor-sharp observations behind me and you can suck it up. Thank you to my many true friends who have stuck by me, you have been worth living and struggling for. And Bawl, you might gaslight me all around town but many are awake to you sociopathic ugliness, they've noticed you never smile. 

Those fools you've lied to don't know that it's you who weekly told me abusive stories about you, otherwise I'd know nothing: how Maya was a thieving junkie who sent her friends broke; how Leslie Dimwit is an ugly old drunken whore he wouldn't fuck with a 10 ft pole; how the guys in his band are hopeless, talentless bores; how the band leader Brontosaurus is a desperate old wannabe who's come late to music and croaks like cane-toad roadkill; how Squashty Hughes is a lousy performer, so ugly you'd think she was a guy in drag. Yes you fuckwits, this is what stoic, stern, stolid, sullen, silent Bawl thinks about you. He's so toxic and overweight his heart will give out on him or he'll have a stroke not long after he turns sixty, that much drinking and shooting up will have to have its destructive effect, they'll find him dead in the morning. Good riddance to bad rubbish I say!

If you enjoy my scabrous tales read the best of them in my latest book, order it at tobyzoates@hotmail.com