Night People.

 
I reckon certain members of society have evolved over the years to stay awake and alert throughout the night to keep watch and warn about danger, of predatory animals, storms and enemy warriors creeping up on them, otherwise the human tribe would've been wiped out long ago. Especially wildcats had to be guarded against, they picked off so many of our ape-men ancestors, they loom up terrifyingly in our collective psyche. And let's not think about the monsters that lurk in the night of big, modern cities, ready to jump upon the unwary for their wallet or their flesh; such metropolises couldn't function without night-workers keeping it all functioning and semi-protected.

The other night I dreamt I was in some utopianist game-park, where humans and animals lived in respectful harmony, and a huge mangy leopard approached me, limping, one paw held out. I was absolutely mortified and cringed as the creature growled and leapt upon me. I thought I was finished but the wildcat merely wanted to wrestle with me playfully and have me caress his matted fur and maybe heal him of his wounds. That wildcat was me and I need to heal myself, then have no fear. I woke up feeling ebullient, happy that the cat had come to me, my major totem going way back, like I'm one of the 'cat-people'. (All very "hippy psycho-babble" according to the movie 'Thumbsucker' but it feels like an historic/hysteric fit to me, my madness and I couldn't give a shit.)

So this week my muse came back to me, my spirit soared, I took off in flights of fancy and started a new painting, a big close-up scene of a psychedelic Kings Cross on New Year's Eve 1979/80 outside the Pink Pussycat Strip Club. Because of my weekend nightshift I can't return to a normal sleep pattern, I roam my apartment thru the dark hours trying to find the spirit to create. At last this week I alighted upon cloud 7 and got back to painting, for the sheer joy of it, the ecstasy of putting the idea into narrative and colour, not for fame, career, money, a competition, an Art Fair, a doting patron. No, just because I want to, from my guts, heart and brain, like a deranged brat who lets nothing get between him and his work, not even Love. It's very easy to feel defeated in this world of vacuous celebrity, the body/mind droops, is lacklustre, gutless, the world comes down on many try-hards like a ton of shit and kicks us in the teeth for good measure. No wonder every street corner has its resident loonie jabbering at the moon. It's hard to stay afloat.

I dread going back to the hospice at the weekend, I'm responsible for so many people, life and death issues with a thousand and one things to think of, oldies bleeding, shitting, fitting, vomiting, pissing, purulent ulcers dripping, it's so icky and tedious yet I'm glad I force myself to go to the Aged Care Facility, it makes me confident, and real, and brave, and full of life in the face of the one possible god to rule this universe, Entropy. I'll dare to take on any wild project my fevered soul can dream up, painting/writing risque stuff, subversive, transgressive, whatever I feel to, for we devour our years quickly, steak and chips like fairy floss, and no one gets a fun life of unremitting adventure by being a wimp. Thus I scheme thru the nights, there's a light at the end of my tunnel to which I travel towards.

The Book of Se7ens.

I have long been obsessed with the number "7" along withthe rest of the world, only to me it seemed to especially apply for I was born on the 21st in the 7th house of the Zodiac in 1949. In 2001 I read a piece to a group of writers and actors at the Gay Pride Loft off of Taylors Square, Sydney, for an evening of readings titled "Dangerous Desires". I told the audience of about 100 theatre fans my piece was called "7 Fucks in a Sex Shop" from a work in progress titled "The 7 Lives of Toby the Punk Poofy Cat" and I got a big laugh at this. The play-come-short story was a distillation of all my angst-ridden experiences in the utopianist modern capitalist enterprise of 'sex industry backrooms', years of pain, fear, horror, frustration, desire and pleasure that nearly had me cutting my wrists at times, such was the disappointment swamping the few highs. It was a personally intimate, revealing story and I was terrified of putting the spotlight on my fetishes, weakenesses and bad behaviours but the audience belly-laughed, screamed, giggled and roared all the way thru and at the end gave me an uproarious applause, they'd loved the material, for all my cringe-worthy performance.

A year later out came a play at a pub-theatre in the same area called "7 Acts of Love as Witnessed by a Cat" by an already famous writer and I spewed peevish chips that the number "seven, "cats" and "acts of love" had become "in" before I myself could find a publisher. Then the other night I was going past the Seymour Centre Theatre a couple of blocks in the other direction and I saw a huge marquee advertising a play "7 Blowjobs" and again I winced, thinking such close titular parallels can't be coincidental and maybe I'd let the cat out of the bag all those years ago and it had been perculating into the creative environment ever since. But then I recalled previous famous movies, "The Seventh Seal", "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", "Seven Samurai", "The Magnificent 7", "Seven Beauties", "Seven Years in Tibet", "Se7en", "Seven Keys to Baldpate", "The 7th Victim" and I figured the number had long been hot, embedded within world culture for 7 millenia at least and was perfect for including in script titles as it was always the perfect quantity, not too big or too small.

So I've decided to write the "Book of Se7ens" with every 7 I can come across to show how big it is in our collective psyche and why I should see it as lucky and not a hindrance.

I'll begin with "Snow White and the 7 Dwarves" and the 7 colours of the rainbow.
The seven days of the week and the 7 celestial objects as seen by the naked eye in Babylon.
Seven notes in a musical key. 7 comes up most often on infinite throws of the dice.
The seven Seas and the seven Continents. The Seventh Heaven and 7 Levels of Hell.
The seven bodily orifices, the seven glands of the endocrine system and the 7 Chakras.
The 7 Deadly Sins and the 7 Virtues. The Dance of the 7 Veils and the 7 Year Itch.
The 7 Hills of Rome and the 7 Hills of Lisbon. 7 Hills of Sydney and 7 Hills of Kampala.
Portugese peasant women wear 7 petticoats.
Hindu Brides and Grooms walk around the sacred fire 7 times at their wedding.
7 is the perfect number for a people's activist cell. 7 years in gaol is common for many crimes.
The 7 branches on the Jewish Menhorra. The seven wonders of the world.
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The Seventh Day Adventists. 7 Up.
Seven Lucky Gods (Japan). The 7 Virgins in Paradise. The Seven Fates.
The 7 Cities of Delhi. The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.
The Seven Royal Companions of Alexander the Great.
Seven years bad luck on breaking a mirror.
7 million years ago the ancestors of Humans split from the ancestors of Chimpanzees.
In the 7th week of a human embryo development the presence of the Y chromosome turns the
'bipotential' gonad into a testes, a male.
Economic downturns typically endure for seven years after severe banking crisis.
The Seven Oracles of the Never Ending Story.
A piece of paper can't be folded more than seven times.
Mary Magdalene had seven demons exorcised out of her and in her old age she was taken up to heaven by seven angels seven times a day.
Maybe the planet can only handle 7 billion people before there is environmental collapse.
There were seven manned missions to the Moon.
It took seven villages to support a knight and his castle in medieval times.
The human body renews itself every seven years.
 The sonic boom from the Krakatoa Volcano explosion went around the world seven times.
7 Sisters constellation on the horizon was like an alarm clock for planting crops in the northern hemisphere.
7 Pyramids of the Moon in the Teotihuacan cosmic city of Meso America built on celestial plan.
7 weeks sensory deprivation in a Tibetan cave brings on Nirvana.
7 Preciousities of Tibetan Buddhism, (gold, silver, jade, coral, turquoise, ivory, amber.)
To catch the 7th wave to freedom in novel "Papillon."
In Hinduism marriage results from a relationship that has endured for 7 births, (lives).
Moslem martyrs believe they'll get 70 virgins when they enter paradise.
The 7 great virtues such as zeal, chastity, generosity etc.
Jesuit saying, "Give me the boy till he's seven and I'll give you the man."
Custer's 7th cavalry and James Bond 007.
Ghandi's 7 social sins.
Cursed or blessed down to the 7th generation.
The Angel on the 7th step.
The 7 tasks of Hercules.
The 7 Sacraments and The 7th Seal.
Nagarjuna's Sevenfold Negation.

Back to the Cafe of No Return.

Knocking off work past dawn I'm able to call in at the Cafe of No Return, for old Vitto gets there early for a long day of cut-throat gossip and Madame Lefarge knitting. Blocking my way to the door was a deadbeat couple, leftovers from the Saturday night bacchanalia on the Cross, propping each other up against the window, cursing in slurred speech endearments that brain-dead zombies find sweet, "You fuckin' cunt bitch whore, yous was suckin' up to that shithead all night, mumble grunt slurp splat!"

I pushed them out of the way but found the door locked, Vitto was holed up in Cafe Precinct 13, he'd been attacked by twilight junkie thugs a few months previously and egress nowadays was by special invitation. He saw me clamouring and opened up, I skittered in and we relocked the door as more zombies approached, Vitto was a notorious soft touch and the cafe had the only easy toilet for miles. A bedraggled schitzo with rat's tail hair scratched at the glass, it was cold out and he needed the toilet and a place to keep warm till the sun came up, Vitto yelled "No!" but then a legitimate customer arrived and, as the door was unlocked for him, the schitzo scrambled in and clung to a table, immovable, whining and muttering deluded prophesies, so we shrugged and turned our backs on him, "There but for the grace of nogod go I!"

We laughed over the movie "Colour Me Kubrick" which we'd seen the other night, swearing we'd never be taken in by such an obvious fucker as the film's anti-hero conman. Clatter clatter at the glass door, crotchety Old John was demanding entry and Vitto screamed, "Go away! Fuck off! I'm sick of you! Get lost!" The grizzled old fellow clutched his usual bunch of flowers wrapped in tissue which he tried to flog by the railway station, and he waved them at us impecuniously, his wizened, saggy face screwed up in a grimace of despair. There had been letters of complaint written to Column 8 of the S/M Herald about some horrid old creature seen haunting the north shore suburbs and cutting the precious flowers from their swank gardens, 'birds of paradise, roses and tiger-lillys, it was crazy old John, the desperate pensioner who supplemented his income thus, flogging stolen flowers to the unwary.

I felt sorry for the old geezer and, against Vitto's wishes, opened up so he could scurry in and launch into his salesman's pitch for my good-natured benefit, he had a brand new pair of shoes to sell, for only $25, and tho I didn't need shoes, he pleaded so heartrendingly, and brought the price down, $24, $22, $20, I gave in and bought them, daggy shoes fit for a tax collector, still they might come in handy for work one day. The old boy shook my hand vigorously in thanks, as if I'd just paid for a heart by-pass operation, and then he scurried back out into the cold. "He probably shoplifted those fucking shoes,!" growled Vitto, "he comes in here every day and hassles everyone to buy junk he's stolen from somewhere, and he never lets up, I'm sick of him, he drives me crazy!" I felt mortified to be encouraging such villainy, but he was such a sorry old sod, maybe he blew it on the horses, but just maybe I had fed him for a week, it was worth the risk.

The day was hardly started, just warming up, and the desperadoes were crowding in, lonely for a social club, needy of human company, any company. Richard tottered in on his walking-stick, looking sick as a mangy dog, skeletal, the ravages of cancer about to finish him off in the next few minutes. He'd been diagnosed with an incurable disease only a few months ago, overnight he'd deteriorated to a walking-corpse true to chaos theory, and now he just wanted to sit with the derros in the Cafe Hole in the Wall, never saying anything, simply be amongst humans for his last days on earth, derive some warmth, some contact, some distant caring. Thus was the Cafe of God's Waiting Room for all of us dispossessed, alienated, defeated and down-trodden, and Vitto was like a cranky, cruel Mother Theresa, knitting, knitting, woolen shrouds that fit all comers to the Pearly Gates Cafe.

Of Lamas, Freemasons and Psychedelic Cartoons.

Life is full of absurd surprises, like on Friday night when I was taken to Sydney's central Masonic Temple for a lecture by a Tibetan Rinpoche Lama. A close friend of mine has become an acolyte, Tibetan mysticism appealing more to her than her previous Catholicism. I was more mystified about such exoticism of high Himalayan Buddhism and found it quite surreal to hear about it in such a hard-arsed city like Sydney, and in the grand hall of the Freemason's temple to boot, their ghosts welling up from the nuclear fall-out shelter in the crypt below and wailing in shock around me.

I imagined the 500 nice Aussie white groupies in the audience were sincerely seeking the sacred in a terribly materialistic and mundane world, and had chosen Tibetan Budhism as having great promise. Another friend sitting nearby whispered to me that there were some in the crowd known as 'Lama lovers', hoping to sully the virginal, pristine monks sworn to lifelong celibacy and thus attractive to certain jaded Western succubi types, zeroing in on all that Eastern innocence. I scanned the crowd of placid, polite spiritual waifs, white middle-class do-gooders scrubbed antiseptically clean, trying to pick out who were the lusty and pretentious wankers. The sheep-like Aussie monks dressed up in their saffron and maroon costumes amused me, they crept about with earnest, milksop miens, swishing their robes over their shoulders like drag queens, hogging the front row, holier than the rest of us worldly slobs, most of them idealistically young, shaven-headed and pink-skinned like new-born wombats, and I wondered for how many years they would keep up the front before collapsing back into decadent capitalist temptation, buying or screwing everything within reach.

Then the old Rinpoche Lama turned up and the crowd bowed in obeisance, like God had walked in, some even flinging themselves upon the floor and prostrating 3 times, to show their zeal and holy commitment. I guess they were honest in their respect and awe but it still seemed ridiculous to me, he was just a human, even Buddha himself said there was no god, and there should be no religion made in his name, but desperate seekers see only what their clouded mind's project, we all want the sacred in our lives, and the "special" to come save us, even me, who always hopes that one fine day a great teacher like Babaji, yogi of yogis, will walk out of his hidden Himalayan fastness, tap me on the shoulder and say, "Yes Toby, you are ready for the eternal wisdom, come with me." That's why I roam the Himalayan mountains so often, only it never happens, because it's a myth, a romance, and I'm the eternal lost soul, wanderer, desirous, horny, mischievous trickster, incapable of sticking with the real thing even if it happened my way.

Anyway, the Great Lama finally sat and proceeded to give a long-winded lecture, harrumphing, coughing, wheezing, whispering, giggling, mumbling, on and on and on, and I couldn't make out barely a word, (it all sounded Tibetan to me), something about my mother and father being illusions, (my old mum will be sad to hear that), and 'sound' was also the basis of Illusion; if so, that meant his mumblings as well. The crowd listened raptly, as if they understood everything, it was life-awakening for them, and when he giggled idiotically they laughed with him, all very honourable and jolly, quite daft in my mind, I didn't get a single joke for all the polite laughing. I meditated on his vibes for an hour, there was some charisma there, he might even have been passing in and out of Nirvana as there were many long moments of silence that were extremely sweet, but still I understood nothing, maybe it was just not my thing, I was not ready for the message. I grew restless and impatient, after 90 minutes I gave up and rushed from the auditorium, past the stained glass portrait of some high, solemn Freemason glaring balefully down upon me and out into the blessed rain and fresh air.

In relief I went to the movies, to see "Cars" by the Pixar Animation Studios, and got much more of a high, spirit-filled experience, the psychedelic colours, the funny car jokes, the music, the art, the sweet story of the journey being more important than the goal, it made me very happy, I even cried with delight, like a child, I had a life-affirming epiphany, 'up' movies my kind of religion, I saw the 7 sacred colours beamed thru the white light and nectar dripped from the roof of my head. YOW!!!

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.

Punk Attitude in a Cannibal Society.

For the last week I've been workingat a hospital named after a Christian Saint, of all beings, me the consummate pagan, but at the final thresh-hold of life, a hospice for the dying, launching from the material world into the infinite Light, (I hope), religion doesn't really matter, humanity is all there is. I was terrified of the job before I went in, it seemed terribly complicated, so many wards, 175 aged and dying people for wild little animal me to look after, yet my experience stood me in great stead, the worst was thrown at me from the beginning and I handled it with aplomb.

Two old ladies fell over at dawn and cracked their heads, not in my wards because I try to be there to catch them, but I rushed over and assisted my fellow nurse in this hospice's technique of patching up such wounds and after dealing with these nasty gashes felt I was ready for the worst. The fire alarm went off with much futuristic fanfare: bells, sirens, disembodied voices echoing instructions bouncing up and down the 7 levels, the staff all ran around like headless chickens, very few knew what to do, me and the charge nurse gave a quick one minute course in 'fire-drill', luckily the fire that set off the alarm was burning toast in the nurse's residential quarters and no disaster of eternal flames rained down.

And one old woman died on me at 3 am in the morning as I sat by her bed, she was Jewish, a survivor of the concentration camps in World War Two Germany. I noticed her breath grow more and more shallow and I  leant forward to observe her more closely and caught her very last breath exhaled into my face, I inadvertently breathed it in, and I felt I was then imbued with her ancient spirit, as if I was being passed a baton in the survivor's race for life. I've sat with many people as they've died so I was not unduly freaked out, death is "the final destination" of life and in fact I was honoured to be the one to send her across the mysterious dark river of the Unknown.

She had shat herself at the point of death and I was told the Jewish religion demanded she not be touched till her Rabbi came in to offer up last rites. He was not due for several hours and she was to lie in her own faeces, smelling like a sewer, though her family was to sit with her soon. I decided to ignore the irrational demands of her faith and got my assistants to clean her up quickly, dress her in her best clothes and have her presentable for all her loved ones to fuss over. And I'm deadly sure if she was asked in years gone by if she'd like to be left squelching down into her own shit as she died, she would've replied in horror, "No damned way!"

I finished work at 8am and, exhausted, had to catch the rush-hour train thru the city. The platform was packed with commuters and when the train pulled in at 8.45 it too was jam-packed to the doors with sardine-like humans with no way for us on the platform to squeeze in. I could see there was space up in the middle of the carriage, the drones were simply  blocking the doorways so they could be the first to get off, and nobody else could get in. In a flurry I just threw myself into them, pushing them aside, at first politely asking them to move up the stairway, and when they just stood there like lumps ignoring me, I started shoving them aside and yelling, "Move, fuckwits!"

Still they blocked my way, standing on each others'toes, in each others' faces, dead-eyed like zombies, not standing aside even the slightest bit to let me thru. I had to shove and push harder and made my way up into the carriage, with certain suits tsk tsking and pushing me back, one arsehole heaving my backpack in my face because it brushed her coiffed head. The train pulled into Martin Place, where all the sky-scrapers threaten to topple over, the pack of zombies rushed off and I realised the mob were mostly office workers, pushing useless bits of paper for a job and possibly sending many poor souls into penury, and I called out loudly after them, "What a bunch of arse-holes!" The rest of the alien drones shuddered, and I saw them pretend exaggerated politeness in contrast to my rudeness as they eased past each other to get off at Town Hall Station, shop-keepers for the most part, ready for another day of selling shoddy crap to morons who didn't want it.

Sydney has become the "banana republic" long threatened by our 'rulers' and these were the third-world hordes scrambling to their slavery, and as one tall, blonde wimp left for his collar and tie non-job he gave me a vicious look of "How dare you show your rude individuality to us good, conforming citizens!" And I smirked back at him with a "Fuck-you" cheesy grin,  I'm 'BAD',it amuses me to have a punk attitude in this rat-race world, at the least it gets you onto a crowded train. I yelled at his white-shirted back, "You'll all end up on your deathbed one day, lying in your own shit!"

(I realise this all sounds anti-people/worker, as if I'm not part of the faceless crowd, but this Blog is all about "me , me, me!", the crass curmudgeon and yowling Punk Poofy Cat, lost in a magnificently enigmatic, uncaring universe.)

Watching the remake of "The Omen" last night at a special cinema screening on "Beast's Day, 6-6-06", (like, why do 'They' bother, it was frame for frame the same as the old one!) I was struck by the idea that thousands of years ago certain old power-mongers guessed that in the future our potential for violence and destruction, teamed up with our technology, could end in the "last of days", the "Armageddon", the end of humanity but, being ignorant, crafty and superstitious, they projected out of themselves reified ideas of good and evil, God and the Devil, to take responsibility for the horrors that would come, conveniently ignoring that the good and evil came from humans themselves, they committed BAD stuff on each other, with no help from outside entities.

On reading Jared Diamond's "Collapse", he reminded me that when populations outgrow their resources and stupidly exploit their environments till everything collapses, the people starve and fight over land, and some of them can turn to cannibalism, as happened in the Pacific Islands and Africa when they ran out of food. I also flashed that George Romero's zombie movies, "Dawn of the Dead" etc are not just metaphors for contemporary consumer capitalism where we are all forced into taking the skin from each others' backs to survive; amongst the billions teeming on this planet we're all strangers and thus don't care about anyone, (except our own families), and we end up selling, forcing, promoting life-draining rubbish on each other and thus consuming faceless humanity. Those zombie movies also warn of civilization's collapse in the future, where we fucked the environment, run out of food and chaos ensues and we turn on each other as a food source.

Those crowds of good citizens packed passively on the trains are ripe for 'cannibal society' and only those with a tough Punk attitude will possibly survive, pushing their way through all the shit raining down, (and hopefully make it out of the cities and into the wilderness to establish 'Utopias' of sustainability and co-operation, a contradiction to Punk attitude I know but I'm as full of shit as the next zombie!) For all I don't seem to care, I'm a nurse, another contradiction, I feel compassion for flawed humanity, most running in fear, knowing they will die some day.

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!!!

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.

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.