No Rest for the Wild.

I was awakened this morning by much screaming, it reminded me of Northcott only I'm now in India, the kerfluffle was shouted in Japanese, absurd, like beserker Samurai warriors going at each other with incomprehensible curses, 2 Jap hippies were fighting over a pretty Jap girl in front of my door and my landlord rushed about screeching, "get out, get out!" while the girl smiled demurely, enjoying the ruckus. I just got a text telling me Northcott Housing Estate has been given an award by the World Health Org as a "safe community", I'm relieved but stunned it had to happen while I'm away, maybe I bring the maelstrom with me?

I was taken way into the Himalayas to visit a Baba in his cave by the Ganges River, he turned out to be a Swiss guy, Peter Baba, who firmly believes he's a sadhu, lives naked with ashes streaked across his forehead and arms tho still insists on having his Nescafe and Bournvita daily. In the midst of an idyllic paradise, for the 2 hours we spent with him, he moaned on and on about his need for a visa and 50 rupees a day living expenses. He has gone to the Consulates in Delhi with only a sheer cheese-cloth wrapped about his skinny, naked frame, ashes and dreadlocks flying, and of course they give him short shrift. He now swears he'll attack any cop with his trishul, (trident), if they come to drag him out of his cave. He bemoans the rule of high capitalism, apparently throws temper tantums whenever in the marketplace over the ubiquitous use of plastic etc, the old times of hippies wandering penniless are over but he clings to his dreams, divinely mad, one of the zillion crazy characters that litter this wondrous land.

I wanted to go to the Tibetan market in Dehradune, capitol city of the state of Uttaranchal, a madhouse of whirling traffic, and I took my life in my hand to do so, zooming in headlong rush on a motor-bike amidst unbelievable chaos, nearly killed twice, first when my driver stopped suddenly to chat to a fat gronk on another motorbike causing a car behind us to brake hard or ram us flat, the second time when a cow ran across the highway tethered to a rope tied to a sleeping drunk (!), the rope like a taut barrier which was snapped by a truck just before we hit it! As we sped along we passed a biker-baba, a sadhu in full regalia, red turban entwined with a pile of dreadlocks, face painted, ropes of beads around wrist and neck, very laid-back on his Enfield, cruising slowly as if thru honey, while everyone else rush-rush-rushed, I pointed him out as a role-model for my driver, that sadhu had IT. I got to the market a whiter shade of pale, bought some lovely clothes and ate genuine moo-moos from a Tibetan kitchen, and wonderd if it was worth the terror.

Next up was a night at a regional cinema, the usual vast concrete barn with an audience whose restlessness made the city-dwellers seem sedate. I was surrounded by drunks who yahooed, jeered and jumped about, forvever knocking my sore knee when they continuously rushed to and fro, we all played musical chairs thuout the movie, changing seats constantly, no matter where I sat I got some screaming yobbo on top of me or a fat Sikh in front whose turban blocked my view. The movie was the latest Bollywood shlockbuster, "Dhoom 2", James Bond meets Ocean's 11 meets Batman if you can believe it, very entertaining, especially the song and dance sequences, an absolute knock-out, Hrithik Roshan and Ashwarya Rai sure can dance, imagine if Arnie Shwartznegger or Bruce Willis did an ecstatic, wild hip-hop routine in the midst of an action stunt, I dont think so, only in India, as Arian quoted Alexander the Great on the Indians, "they're inordinately fond of singing and dancing.". I was much bemused when all my friends lit up joints, the smoke swirling up into the projection light, making the colourful event even more hypnogogic.

The best things seem to happen when I least expect it, we went for a ride to a village called Chilla next to a national park and out of curiosity we enquired about the jungle safaris. What do you know but an elephant was ready for the rare tourist that might stray by, something I'd been chasing for years but nobody could ever get it together. My mate and I got up on Rajah, a 16 year old male who had been rescued some years before when his mother had attacked a train that chuffs through the park and been killed. I remembered the newspaper story, the elephant herd had stayed on the spot for weeks attacking any further trains in furious revenge, and here I was riding on the back of one of them. We went into deep jungle, a guy by our side with a huge shotgun, chasing the wildlife about, there was no impenetrable bush where they could hide as Rajah just crashed through it, and I saw all kinds of deer and stags, hyenas, wild-pigs and birds, no big cats which I'm glad of as humans disturb them enough.

Rajah had a will of his own and went to all the spots where his favourite food was, like bamboo shoots and exotic grasses, and I got the most pleasure just being with him and watching him have his way. At one point he got stroppy and I thought he was going to run amok with us clinging to his back willy-nilly, but after he ate his fill of bamboo shoots he then calmed down and plodded on. As a boy I was obsessed with "Jungle Jim" movies, swearing I too would follow in his footsteps, and I must say, much of my life I have indeed done just that, and Rajah made another of my dreams come true, like for a few moments I was Kipling's "Elephant Boy" = WOW!

Another Kind of "Jungle Book".

I spent 7 days in the 7 cities of Delhi, spinning around in auto-rickshaws showing my best friend such superb monuments as Quatar Minar, India Gate, Jama Majhid and Jantar Mantar where I started a new series of paintings to do with India. I would've made it to Humayan's Tomb only the Chinese Premier, another kind of Hu, was in town and all traffic in the city got jammed for his VIP cavalcade, 20 million citizens and umpteen tourists put out for one bigwig, they could've flown him in in a helicopter but I guess such power-brokers enjoy holding up an entire city. I got a seven day fever from the intense pollution blanketing the air, impossible to live in, it obviously shortens the local's life-spans.

I went to Delhi Zoo to say hello to the animals but I chose the wrong day, Monday is school-outing day and I was trampled by hordes of kids who terrorized the poor animals, and me as well. They found me more fascinating than any exotic creature, a crowd gathering around me to stare at the Aussie freak, no matter where I tried to take a rest. I was lucky to see the 1 1/2 year old white tiger cub licking the honey from a tree in his compound, then spraying the tree with huge squirts of his territorial juices, one of the most magnificent creature on the planet, I got high watching him for a half an hour and hopefully my entrance fee will go towards looking after him. Finally I found the strength to drag my bags to the Interstate Bus Terminal only to find the usual Indian chaos, a bus strike and I must go on the special Deluxe Bus, this being an old con, one can wait vainly 7 hours in the dust for such a mirage to appear, so I ignored the many exhortations and sure enough the local bus turned up and I was off to the Himalayas.

I cant help but return to that Shangri-la in the foothills of the Himalayas where my old mentor Compassion, (an Aussie yogi who worked under the artist's name of "Latimer" for most of his life), died so many years ago, to sit near the place in the Ganges River where we threw his body for the sacred fish to eat, this being the hallowed body-disposal method for yogis who die in Samadhi, which I believe he hopefully achieved after many years of yogic practice. It was incredibly sweet to be welcomed home by good friends of ten years, to be brought gooey, mock-cream cake as a Maharaja's treat and be told all the tales and gossip of the last year's unbelievable happenings, who got married, who had a car-crash, who suicided, who has become a junkie or a drunk, who got a fuck. Saddest of all was to be told a good friend of mine died from hepatitis and there was not even enough money to buy the wood for his funereal pyre so a collection had to be taken up around the village. Life here is transitory, no wonder they hope for reincarnation.

I laughed when my Sikh friend told me of a trekking tour he went on high in the mountains. He was left behind in the camp as the cook and while he was bending over collecting wood an old man showed up and grabbed him on the arse to his great shock. The ancient lived alone with his animals in a hut and had no teeth, with skin like wrinkled leather from many decades of hard work. The wizened fellow invited Sonnu to his hut to smoke a chillum but whilst in the hut refused to give the promised smoke unless Sonnu showed him his dick. This was refused and the old boy worked himself into a tizzy, begging for cock-therapy, proffering then refusing the chillum, whining on and on till my friend had to beat a hasty retreat. This story highly amused me as it proved even in the high Himalayas basic human nature will out.

The jungle virtually comes into the town of Shangri-la, wild elephants maraud at night, killing villagers in their huts to drink their fermented alcohol, breaking into warehouses to scoff up the food supplies, or ripping into old Babaji's garden and tearing up his banana trees; he is an an old man I love to visit and only last night the elephants came. I've been told by a mate not to roam about at night as the elephants may come and squash me, all of which I find terribly exciting and tempts me to indeed wander about the jungle's edges. A few weeks ago a woman was cutting grass up near Neel Kanth, a temple to Shiva in the mountains 21 kms away, and a huge black Himalayan bear attacked her, biting her on the leg, her hitting it on the head twice with her sickle-knife to make it run off. Once when I went trekking in the mountain jungles leapords prowled around my camp-site at night, my guide was shaking in fear, me by the fire with a burning stick to beat it off if it came too close, false-heroics but it's the adventure I live for, like "Jungle Jim".

Shangri-la is deceptively paradisical, the River Ganges a wild torrent, not the placid swimming pool one hopes, only last week an Indian girl drowned when her tourist-raft flipped in the rapids, though she wore a life-jacket and was quite safe, in panic she kept her mouth open and swallowed enough water to kill her. Many, many drown here each summer, one time I watched a body drift slowly by, he'd only drowned minutes before and it was so spooky to see him gliding off to the nether-world for all the world looking like he might lift his head and call for help. Now my mate has told me a crocodile was seen up the river near Jim Corbett Park, which certainly adds frisson to the rafting expedition we plan in the next few days. And I myself am another wild animal, loose in the jungle, somewhat mad, certainly ecstatic, for now.

On the Magic Carpet.

So, just like in my most favourite movie, "The Thief of Baghdad", I got on a magic carpet and was flown to the land of wonders, perhaps to appropriate the omniscient eye of an arcane godhead atop the Himalayas, and recharge my pineal gland with white light. I landed in K.L. for a stop-over at 4 am and got lost in their labyrnthine shopping complex, sent willy-nilly in all directions looking for the smoking lounge till finally I shrieked under a huge banner that proclaimed "K.L. Best Airport in the World." "That banner is wrong, this is the worst airport in the world." I finally found a dark corner upstairs to sleep a few hours and then I was on my way again.

Disaster struck soon on landing, I waited by the luggage carousel for hours and no bag appeared, what frustration! It was misplaced in lovely K.L. airport! Off I went to my hotel in Pahagrunge and lived in my dirty clothes till the case arrived 2 days later. I was lucky to see three elephants on my arrival, it seems Hatthi is to be my guardian spirit on this journey, in Main Bazar I got to pat the third elephant and he wrapped his trunk around my arm, the boy mahout on top indicating with huge round eyes that I should climb up but I didn't want to make a spectacle of myself so refused. Later I saw the elephant easting plastic bags, my Indian mate told me the poor creature seemed weak but still I didnt get the meaning of the mahout's large desperate eyes. His elephant was starving and all the stupid tourists taking photos took no notice of his wide-eyed pleas for help, including me, and I lay awake all night thinking of the animal. Now I search the alleyways looking for him but tonight he is not to be found and I must learn from this lesson to take more care.

I'm very lucky as on my first day, in a city of 20 million, I ran into my best friend who came to Delhi looking for me. He will now acoompany me and keep me safe, I will no longer be a victim for handsome, smiling men who only want to bleed me of my money. My mate is Moslem, weird as I have the usual western predjudices against that religion and he is teaching me that the essence of the faith is kindness and love, he is a very sweet soul, like the majority of his faith, only wanting to live in peace, so he's very good for my education. He's never seen Delhi and I have been showing him the marvellous Mughal monuments that litter this fabled city. Today we went to the Lodhi Gardens, tranquil heart of Delhi to get rest in nature and ogle the 500 year old mosques, palaces and mausaleums.

Last night we went to the movies, across the city to the Chanakya Cinema, a vast, klunky Bau-haus concrete barn with a giant 70 mm screen that "they" want to pull down and erect a post-modern shopping complex but the leasee is resisting, it's one of the oldest cinemas here and I have long loved it. We saw "Casino Royale", really good, the new Bond, Craig whatshis name, an athletic, grim, armoured warrior and I think he fits way cool. I'm a guy who at 12 years old saw "Doctor No" on first release and was blown away as a fan, in fact masturbating over Sean Connery all thru my teens, and it's so cool to see the Bond franchise as cutting and wow-factored as ever, especially that beginning chase scene, on foot instead of the usual cars and aeroplanes, the movie gets 8 "Dings" on my schlockometre. Indian audiences are very restless, getting up continuously to roam about, talking on their mobiles thu.out, splitting the movie in two for an interval so we can all rush out for a smoke, it's wild. I was totally stunned at the short doco that screened before the feature, an exposition on the need to keep the waterways clean so diseases like hepatitus dont spread. Suddenly we were shown the bare butts of 3 Indian men taking a dump by a river, the whole audience cracked up in hilarity, only in India would they be so blase, and that's why I love the place.

Tonight we went to Jama Majhid in Old Delhi to eyeball the crowds and eat yummy food in the bazar and here I had a great tourist experience. I've lived in India much of my life and always there is something new to experience and today was another first. I noticed mobs of paupers squatting outside each restaurant near the Majhid and asked my mate what they were doing. He said they were waiting to be fed by rich people, so I handed the restauranter a 100 Rupees, the equivalent of $3, and then he made me personally hand out the food, I fed 10 desperate men and it made me very high. Of course I could've fed more but the whole market-place would have rioted yet it is definately something I will do again. (I'm not pretending to be a saint, when I lived in India as a boy in the '70s I was left destitute several times with only a rag wrapped around my waist and the Indian people always fed me, so now it is payback time.)

For all those kind souls out there in the world who want to help the starving masses my suggestion would be to come to India and not only spend money touring as that employs lots of people but to go personally to places like Jama Majhid and hand the food out directly, and of course, hand out 10 rupe notes to the aged and crippled that wander the streets, in a month's sojourn it would all only amount to $100 and that's so little to see so many smiling faces. Soon I will be off to the high Himalayas, flying on a genie's back, and I will return with treasures for life on the move is awesome and my heart will be turned to gold.

Clover Moore is a Boor...

"Clover Moore is a boor, stays at home and scrubs the floor..." Kings Cross Children's Nursery Rhyme.

This essay is a response to the bullshit article in the "Daily Terror" about our Lord Mayor trying to clean up the sleaze of Kings Cross by getting rid of the strip joints and limiting the number of night clubs. The area has been an entertainment district for aeons, a big city like Sydney needs such a place, we all work hard and want somewhere to let our hair down, and the Cross is IT! Just cause Clover's got a punk razor-cut and no hair to let down, and is so tired from 2 jobs, M.P. and Mayor, she doesn't go out for any fun, doesn't mean the rest of us have to be sticks in the mud. All the area needs is better management, more security and street cleaning, but she's too busy to think of that, easier to pick on bullshit like "sleaze". She's got her priorities wrong, she should be much more concerned with limiting the apartment-towers mushrooming up everywhere and over-congesting the small area with too many residents. This influx of new middle-class denizens now want to change the "bohemia" atmosphere, that attracted them here in the first place, to a nice, quiet retirement village and Clover's only thinking of their votes, and possible bribes.

There's a proposal to knock down the quaint Baron's Pub building in Roslyn Street and put up yet another overwhelming apartment tower block, a move that would destroy the atmosphere and style of the street and the Cross as a whole, one of the last vestiges of it's old glory wiped off the map, turning the place into a boring airport waiting lounge with shopping as the main form of entertainment, like Singapore. Clover should remember her street-fighting antecedents and work to retain the Cross's funky, historic flavour, that's what tourists want, not more glass towers. In the old days the Cross used to jump on the weekends, it was exciting and fun, regardless of all the sleaze, and everybody made money and was happy. With the so-called clean-up many businesses went bust and the only money made was in the pathetic pokie palaces. We want the Cross to jump again, crowds of fun-lovers throwing their money about, but that's not in Clover's ken, she's got a huge pay packet and perks, business can go jump in the harbour.

I was highly bemused at her equation of "sex, crime, art and money"!!! Where does ART come into it? Her council knocked back the funding for the Kings Cross Arts Guild Annual Arts Festival, all us struggling artists were left with no support, no venues, no audience, we had to fuck-off, starve or die in ignominy and maybe in fifty years a few of us might get a little brass plaque set into the footpath announcing that "once so and so had taken a dump right on this spot." Us living artists get it in the neck, but oh, yeah, millions was handed to the corporate arts bodies to hang those bland, safe banners from every lamp-post in the city, like so many arse-wipes, (tho I do like the 'Buddha with the lotus' banners down near China Town.) I have a dream of running an "arts market" for visual artists in the small park opposite the Piccolo Cafe in Roslyn street but I bet I have an uphill battle to get council permission. Repeat, it's the apartment towers that have reached saturation point, dear Clover, not the night clubs, we want the Cross to keep it's Montmartre milieu, we artists want to continue to live, work and play here, and we need your love, not your antipathy!

Home Horror Movies.

 More shrieking, more laments, more woe, raining down at Northcott Housing Ghetto. Clover Moore, the punked-out Lord Mayor of Sydney, came to our Community Centre to gladhandle the demi-monde in an attempt to mollify a moaning crowd of fearful residents. Most of us here are at the bottom of the heap, society dumps on us, we murder each other in angst, and she's trying to plaster it over with a mouthful of platitudes. In response, the very next day, some poor soul could take it no more and leapt from his 24th floor balcony, another faceless squish upon the cold concrete. If the statistics on suicide were publicised, our conservative P.M. John Cowherd's economic miracle would be exposed for the cruel, Dickensian system it is. And he wants to introduce Christian Chaplains into the schools to soothe any psychic wounds, more brain-wash band-aids, if his world-view really operated he would burn in Hell for eternity for his cynical money-grubbing idolatry.

As a metaphor for our times, I suppose the torture-porn movie "Saw 3" is apt, our TV news tells us nightly of bodies found all over that have been tortured to death, a medieavil gore-fest that has us cold and numb, like the woman frozen in the film, vicarious relief at somebody else's bad luck. The teenage audience I saw the movie with went deadly silent thru.out the screening, no moans, yelps, laughs, or yuks like there usually is, just total absorbed fascination with torture after torture, to a headbanging rock soundtrack. The story was irrational, repetitive and non-scary, I was most dissatisfied, giving it only 4 "Dings" on my schlockometer for the mis en scene of the torture machinery, but the teens all clapped at the flat denouement, like they thought it was clever, really a stop-gap ending with the aim of milking more money from a rotten piece of fruit that had been squeezed dry. The only scene I really liked was the judge being drowned in the vat of minced pig-guts, as if there is some justice in the world after all.

But around every grungy corner can be a de-light-ful event, I was invited to "Cross Projections", involving 14 photographers who flash their work up onto an auditorium wall with a sweet sountrack as accompaniment, many of the photos extremely luminous, like the miracle and wonder of life shines thru the gloom, the weirdest of humanity made to look like angels, I got very high and wept in ecstacy. Aboriginals in the bush, a gang of strippers in the outer-suburbs, Goth/punk teenagers who hang around Hyde Park, there was even a set of images on the deviants of Kings Cross, all the monsters we see daily, the druggies, drunks, hookers and perverts, who in glorious black and white look interesting, iconic, human even, tho I noticed it was the one series that Vitto didnt clap uproariously for, he's been on the Cross too long and sees these villains as the pain in the arse they collectively are, no gorgeous framing will lighten his view of them, they're always rudely clammering at his cafe door for some handout. But I loved the show, in this medieavil labyrnth of Sydney, it was a light on the hill.

P.S. I just got a phone call from the wife of the 1st guy who suicided  here at Northcott last week, she's been put onto me by a mutual girlfriend. She says the police are bullshitting her about his supposed suicide, she saw his body in the morgue and it was covered in bruises and scratches as if he'd been fighting with someone. I told her I'd just met someone who saw his body, it was naked except for a pair of shoes and socks, which seems to be the costume of a suicide. She had the paranoid fear the cops were covering up the death because they were dealing the drugs in the building and were killing off people who got in their way. I assured her that was a bit far-fetched, the more obvious truth was they can't be bothered investigating the death of a drug addict and the powers that be don't want Northcott to gain any more notoriety as "Murder Central", (suicide does not get publicised in the press), so she can blame negligence, laziness and fear of notoriety on the cops, nothing more sinister, tho in this ugly world the most terrible facts do come to light to one's shocked surprise. She needed closure, and counselling, and I talked to her for an hour trying to soothe her shattered soul. I hope her and her husband find some eternal rest, here at Northcott it's a long time coming.

Chaos Dreary.

I'm all mollified and quiescent these days after throwing temper tantrums across the city because of my supposed fuck-over at the art competition. I've got the local community in a tizz trying to placate me, people who know me gird their loins at my approach, trying to figure out how they will manage me and my "children of the dammed" glowing eyes. With much ringing around it has been arranged that my fabulous painting will hang in the red-light district library for a few months and so I'm happy again, a stunted Talouse Lautrec who finally discovers he's trully loved, by someone.

Here at Northcott Housing Ghetto chaos rules as ever, there's been another murder, 2 nutters had a fight on their 20th floor balcony, one tried to slash the throat of the other with a saw-toothed blade and got himself pushed over the edge in the struggle, to splatter onto the copncrete far below. The housing officers here must be mighty sick of scraping up the human detritus, they sure make a mess of the place when they come crashing down. It reminds me of the time 2 ugly cops knocked on my door and questioned me about a corpse found squashed on the pavement a few doors up from me, did I hear anything in the night, did I know the fellow, did I know anything? "Mate, bodies rain down around here like frogs!" I replied, much to their displeasure, a grimace on their mugs as they marched off to question other hapless denizens. I stay inside when I hear the squishy splatts, I dont need any extra aggravation.

Cursula and Bawl next door have gone sweetly quiet since my mental furor of a month ago, they don't dare rouse the sleeping dragon of T.Z., in all the years I think it's been my insomnia that has me raging so maniacally at the drop of a pin. On the other side of me Eric the Grey has lost his keys again and every 5 minutes climbs thru his window making a nerve-shattering racket, scrape, scrape, bang, bang, my teeth are on edge when I hear him limp by,why cant someone kill him? I'm often awoken by lots of shrieking, old Dolly and the gay guys freaking out cause the schitzo has left his taps running and flooded his flat again, this happens every weekend, no kidding, and we just cant get rid of him, like the omnipresent cockroaches.

Dolly and I had meeting number 1001, this time with the head of the whole housing complex, an avuncular bureaucrat who pretended concern and arranged a time when he would inspect the damage all the flooding has caused but then stood us up, we're just gutter waifs and have zero importance, and I've simply given up trying to improve our situation, I'll just run away to India instead. Apparently there are lots of empty apartments in the complex as most good citizens dont want to live here, at least for me it's good grist for my writing mill, chaos rules, making life interesting at times, dreary when it's inexorable.

All Cranked Up on Crank.

Being a movie hound, for what it's worth, here's my 7 favorite movies of 2006, tho the year's not over, maybe nothing could beat these. Near top of the heap is "8 Below", the huskies in Antarctica, which got my heart strings in a zing, but I give my highest accolades to the Aussie movie "10 Canoes" by Rolf De Heer and the Northern Territory Tribes, absolute consummate film-making, when the Aboriginal protagonist danced himself into his death at the end, my soul flew away with him.

Then there was "The Libertine" with Johnny Depp, an incisive treatise on sex and mores, and "The Departed" by Scorsese, (I've become a fan of Leonard Dicaprio all over again as he's truly intense, maybe the best actor on the planet at the moment), and "Children of Men" with Clive Owen, grungy futurism that had me on the edge of my seat. But yesterday I saw something that knocked me off my seat, "Crank", rock'n'roll, drug-fucked, the next new-wave splatter-fest, it leaves Tarantino way behind like a coked out geriatric, what a slammer of a movie, it rocked and gets 9 "Dings" on my schlockometer, funny, cool, exciting, gory, a ride to tighten your seat belt for, it has it all to satiate a jaded old punk like me. The last place is now given over to "Color Me Kubrick", so witty and entertaining, a nasty old poof passing himself off as a celebrity so he can bludge a living and get a root with all the stupid fame whores.

Tonight I'm off to see the latest Aussie offering, "Suburban Mayhem", which hopefully will join my list of 7 runner-ups, the first of which is a piece of real schlock, "The Hills Have Eyes", a Wes Craven remake but I liked the atomic mutants raping and murdering the happy campers, it confirmed my pessimism about our nuclear future. Other runner-ups would have to include "Good Night and Good Luck", "The Man Inside" and "Final Destination 3", I just cant fit them all in my obsessive top 7. Movies shmoovies, who gives a shit, but it's the art form I love and I make no apologies, I rush with the lemmings over the cliff for every schlockbuster, for me it's like an engrossing book, painting and music C.D. all wrapped in one, it's my drug and "Crank" particularly got me very, very high. Now I'll blow it out my arse, signing off, good night and good fuck.

P.S. ""Surburban Mayhem" was way cool, it gets 8 "Dings", Auz gets nasty and dangerous at last, what an evil little bitch "Katrina" was, the movie would have to have the best line of dialogue for the year, "you're the kind of girl a guy has to kill a dog just to get her to suck his cock!" When said dog got killed I was mighty pissed off, it fucked the movie for me, bad voodoo, but that's PUNK, there are no sacred cows, or dogs!

The Nastiest Cut.

I forgot the coin has two sides, if you have friends you're sure to have enemies. A friend said to me after my win of the People's Choice Award, "now for the cut-down" and I was waiting for it. I was told the show could only hang for 3 days and to come and fetch my work quickly, and as I was taking it down a fellow painter and friend sitting next to me was told to leave his work as the Taxi Club wanted to hang it. I felt the mental-telepathic message to "fuck off" but I stayed cool, wondering why they didn't look me in the eyes as we politely talked, while most of the other artist's work remained up on the walls.

The next day I got an e-mail inviting me to the "Flow On" of the Images of the Cross at the Taxi Club, which goes for 6 weeks and has much greater promise of sales and from which I've been excluded. My guts dropped, tears came to my eyes, I realised all the handshaking and congratulations of the crew from the TAP were totally insincere, fork-tongued, they were jealous and peeved at the clamouring of the crowd and thruout the proceedings were planning to "fuck me off" , they knew of the ongoing exibition from the beginning and kept it quiet from me. A no-talent poet, Robert Nobody, who had insinuated himself into the organization and helped hang the comp, got to choose who lived and who died, he seems to have held a grudge for 2 years from when I refused to submit a drawing to his book of poetry after he'd requested me to pay $150 for the privilege.

The dice are always loaded, there is no such thing as a level playing field, especially in master/slave Sydney. Red Robert had already told me the judge's panel for the comp was predjudiced against me. While one of the judges, an art lecturer from the local art college, was all for my entry, the other judge is another bastard who's held a grudge for the last 7 years, a grossly fat pig we call Jabbba the HUB after the arse-wipe street paper he prints, the HUB, a waste of trees. Once upon a time he'd begged me to do a cover for his paper, promising me $15o if I did it in the 2 day deadline and he pretended satisfaction when I achieved the goal, only he then refused to pay me and I had to chase him for 6 months to get the money, and the last thing he told me was, "you'll never get work with me again." And now he was my judge, I could paint the Sistine Chapel and he'd say something was missing. He's known to consume 7 water buffaloes per day and could feed half of Africa if he went on a diet, how infuriating to be judged by such a bag of shit who wouldn't know art if he sat on it.

My non-career in particular has been a long travaille of such predjudice, grudges and jealousy, at every level of the pyramid of shit there is a wicked bitchfight of manouevring, cudos pumping and money grabbing, it's enough to stop an artist in their tracks, it's just too painful to participate. I now realise the TAP crew were infuriated I'd won the Judge's Prize 2 years ago and had rigged the panel last year for a bastard named Toady Joe who won with a self-portrait, like Dorian Grey, and not an "Image of the Cross", but he's a personal friend of the organiser and she's the ultimate wicked Queen, me being Snow White and the 7 Dwarves. I let it go and participated naively this year without relising they had it in for me, I could've walked in with a Van Gogh, it would do me no good, they'd already decided to fuck me off, they should've been honest as I carried the painting in and saved me the $25 entry fee, but cunts like these are never honest.

My old guru had told me many years ago before he died in my arms that people will only like your work if they like you. This infuriated me as I hoped good work would stand by itself, but he was right, he'd had a long experience of the ARTS and humanity, you have to suck up to all and any, try never to stand on toes or say a controversial word, and maybe, just maybe, you will get hung on a wall. The sad thing for me is to have created so many enemies, yes, from an abrasive, cheeky personality but often from nothing at all, just for being talented, for jealousy is a mighty powerful force. I should be pleased I did such a great painting it's caused a kerfluffle and the no-talents have tried to abolish it, it really must have power. But after only 3 days in the gallery it now sits on my living room wall with no one to appreciate it, a winner that doesn't get an audience, like what was the competition all about if not to show the winner, why would anybody bother to achieve if this is their reward? Every dog has it's day, mine is still to come, something to look forward to I guess.

Robert the Red, a demon with an alcho's flushed face, is sending me urgent e-mails bullshitting me as to why I was excluded from the ongoing show: it's all for the other artist's good, there's not enough room on the wall for me, splutter splutter, crap, crap = they fuck you, they lie to you, then they pretend shock at your upset response and assure each other they were right to do the fucking as the fucked deserved it for not going quietly. Thank nogod I've got 7 true friends, all the fork-tongued back-stabbers can go fuck each other.

A Quirk of Fate.

 Oh yes, I'm happy this morning as I won a prize at an art comp last night, the Images of the Cross Award, I won the People's Choice, $500 worth of Matisse paints. From a lifetime of hard knocks I wondered if I'd won only because a lot of my friends came to support me. I didn't lobby them to vote for me, I was in too much of a tizz to even focus on what was happening, but my friends kept yelling my name thruout the announcements, it was so embarrassing, I think they swamped the voting box, but they wouldn't have done it if they didn't truly think I'd done good work. (I discovered later that 2 of my best friends didn't even vote so it must've been members of the crowd that put me over the line.)

I cringed out the front of the gallery as soon as I realised one of the judges was a a fat bag of shit who hated my guts, I should've heckled him as he gave his welcoming speech, he manages a free street paper and lives off the advertising and knows nothing of art, just his prejudices. But I figured that was the way of all things, judges are always prejudiced in one way or another. As I sat disconsolate, a booming voice resounded upon me, "Toby, get your arse up here, you've won!" I knew this was impossible but duty called and back into the gallery I went only to be met with the glum stares of the crowd, a friend sidled up to me and said, "You didn't win, you got highly commended." I went back outside, my surmise of the scene confirmed, dear Leslie the organiser had loaded the judges once again to make sure I'd get fucked off.

The judges gave the cash prize to a technically perfect photo-realist piece, exquisite, but it looked like it had been traced from a photo it was so perfect, it had a bit of soul but not all those layers of meaning a painter can throw in via his/her mindset/philosohy, not many have a story to tell or an attitude to explode upon the world it seems. The crowd got riled up and kept shouting my name, it really freaked me out, and I knew such avid support would get me in the neck from those jealous types who'll never win anything. And so the crowd voted me The People's Choice, and the organisers gnashed their teeth, they hadn't planned for this.

There's nothing like a crowd of well-wishers cheering one on, and strangers complimenting my talent, shaking my hand and taking photos of me in front of my painting, it'll take me a few days to come down from the high. My bestest friends are running around telling everybody on the Cross I got robbed of the judge's award, I think it's great to get the People's Choice, it's so sweet to be popular and appreciated, I feel like a 7 year old kid again, who after a tragic infancy is suddenly given a birthday party and told he is indeed loved. With enemies, life is hell. Without friends, life is dead.

Reality is Freakier Than Fantasy.

When I paint a picture that turns me on I go on a flight of mania wherein I give up all for the art, throwing health, money, society to the dark nights, for a possibly shit-house painting that only proves my madness, even delusions of grandeur. And as the the last brush strokes went on the canvas the rest of the world collapses and explodes, outside my studio door Eric the Beserker howls like a hyena throughout the night till my own wires get crossed and short-circuited, I rushed out brush in hand and screamed for him to go back into his filthy lair. He picked up a chair and threw it at me, I caught it and threw it back in his face and he scurried into his flat, slamming the door, the whole building awakened by the kerfluffle.

I went up to the Piccolo Rar for some respite, was quietly reading a newpaper when Barry the retard sits by me and demands some human contact. I excuse myself curtly and he flips, he grimaces like a rampaging ape, calling me a "poof" and asking to punch my face in, trying to get me out the front for a fight. I'm too old for it tho I was furious at his moronic rage and ready to smash him in the face with a sugar dispenser if he tried a swing at me. How extremely boring! Why can I never get away from violence, as if I have a neon light above my head that reads "Hit Me!"

When I got back to Northcott Ghetto I found water was pouring in a flood from Eric's front door and from under the building's foundations. For the 1000th time he'd left all his taps running and gone out to forage in the dumpsters. The water wells up thru my bedroom floor like sewerage, the room is mouldy and I haven't lived in it for years, I've had it with this freak, he'll bring the whole building down upon us. I call the Housing dept for rescue, they need to send out an emergency team immediately, single-handedly Eric is going thru Sydney's entire water supply. Eventually a plumber arrives but he is superfluous, other drastic action had been taken.

Over on the other side of his flat Old Dolly comes home and nearly has a heart attack at the sight of the noxious water lapping at her door and, weeping, she relates to me the sordid tale how of late he's putting pornographic photos under her door. Apparently he's found a hoard of porno mags in the dumpster and has been seen masturbating to them while sitting out the front of his flat. He's also been seen handing torn-out pages from these mags to strangers outside Central Railway Station.

Dolly can bear the flood no longer and calls the police. I smoked a strong joint and tried to put the last flourishes to my painting as outside Dolly cried, the gay guys from the end of the verandha cursed and sirens wailed. I heard a lot of yammering and when I went outside got cornered by an old dessicated police seargent and his sidekick S.A.S stormtrooper. They'd climbed thru Eric's window and turned the water off, then were trying to placate the crowd of us sqwarking horror and pleading succour. I was so stoned I couldn't focus and the old cop was laying on the soothing platitudes, telling me all would be taken care of, I was not to worry, I should write a letter to the front office. I laughed hysterically and went back to my painting, just the fleuro flourishes above my central character's head to indicate he was tripping and it was all a dream, and I was finished.

I was in such a daze when I took the painting to the gallery that I lost my expensive mobile in the cab, as if the Grand Whore "ART" demanded one last sacrifice in her honour. Eric got shot up with Modicate by community nurses and I heard one telling him thru his window that he was off to the doctor's next week for an examination, Eric laughing like a demented hyena in reply. The sun is shining, I can kick back and relax till the Kings Cross Arts Festival competition this Thursday night when I'll get feedback on my maniacal creative effort, and Northcott is again sleeping peaceful at night, for awhile, till the next psychic storm breaks. I feel like screaming, "Life, I'm over it!" But I chant my mantra, "AUM" instead, and the Universe evens out blissfully.

Sleaze Ghetto Fabulous.

I woke up to much screaming this morning, Eric the Gray had flooded his apartment again, the sludge is seeping thru the floor and wall into my apartment and into old Dolly's. She was shreiking in hysteria when she found a trail of sludgy garbage-food leading to her door. Some Housing Dept inspectors had come for the 1000th time to eyeball the mess and when Dolly tried to show them the desolation of Eric's lair he came roaring out like a trapped wild animal and tried to hit her. The poor guy lives in a parrallel universe and the rest of us are so many shadows lurking on his periphery. The inspectors were much ruffled and hurried off to hold urgent meetings with the Health Dept, maybe, just maybe, he finally might be put in a hostel where he would be looked after, and we could get the rest we need in our dotage.

My muscles are acheing all over, I must've danced my blues loose at the Sleaze Ball but I dont really remember. The trouble with "trance dancing" is you get extremely high and time whizzes by, the party's over before you know it, you think you danced a lot as there were such yummy moments, like moaning in ecstacy cause the music and crowd were fucking you so dam good, and the gates of 'paradise' swung back and forth, but you can't quite pin it down. I rarely take drugs and my body is very sensitive to foreign chemicals, the pill was too strong and I danced too fast and hard, I spun out and my guts heaved, I found myself lying on the floor dry-reaching, finally I had a slight Ecky spew, psychedelia vomited from my third eye and exploded out the top of my head, the extra poison leaping out of my system, enough remaining to get my body/mind as high as it could go. A sweet old poof rushed over to make sure I was still conscious, I sat up quick and reassured him, and then partied on.

Virtually nobody followed the "Sleaze"encouragement to dress up in costumes as of old, most wore the gear they'd gone to the footy in, the men mostly stripped to their jeans in sexual display, but hardly a nice pair of tits in the hall, if only they realised they looked like soggy dough-nuts, a hot shirt is much more alluring. Lots of het couples were there teasing and snogging, the girls really dressed up sexy, almost the only eye-candy available, except for the cute ghetto boys in their hip-hop gear. But 'dance' ruled, it's what we were there for, 13,000 punters can't be wrong, I wasn't loking at the others, I got lost, I'm pretty sure they went to the max along with me, it felt like a collective orgasm at times.

The live acts were fabulous, sexy girls singing sleaze while a dance troupe of hip-hop boys and pop-ballet girls backed them up, hot excitement surged across the crowd, we jumped to the funk, it was a mighty cool show. I moved to the beat for 7 hours and by the end was exhausted, like stuck in honey, could hardly move a limb. I sat in the blessed bleachers to relax and go inside myself to where the kaleidoscopic lights open up heavenly vistas. I saw a fat s/m blob approach with a young surfer gronk in tow, the blondie had only his board shorts on, he swayed his long hair about as if he were Brad pitt, his tanned flesh pudgy in my face. The bumless gay blob fell drunkenly upon me and I had to shove him off, then they sat beside me, the surfer edging closer to me and touching me up. The psuedo-macho fairy suddenly rushed off and the blonde gronk got closer, leaned upon me and put his arm around me. I knew that in years gone by certain deviants actually had sex in the bleachers with everybody watching and maybe that was what this guy was after. Why he picked grizzled old me I'd like to know, maybe the mirror sun-glasses turned him on, giving me an air of cyberpunk mystery, it was supposed to be a masked ball after all.

He had zeroed in on the wrong cyberpunk, I was too out of it to consider entertaining anybody else. I shrugged him off and asked him, "what's going on ?" In a miopic stupor he pulled away and said nothing but within a few minutes he leant close and tried to embrace me again. The fat pick-up returned with drinks, much displeased to see his fuck for the night was now trying it on some body else. Maybe they were planning one of those 'group sex' pig-outs I'd read about in the gay press, for it was the end of the night and some were probably desperate, but for this little piggy it was the stuff of nightmares, again I pushed the surfer gronk off me and shouted to the laser-light storm, "Ï'm out of here!" I bolted thru the writhing crowd, scoping the freaks, the dykes stood out as the most attractive of punters, they bothered to look good and show style, the poofs might've well have been at a sauna for all the designer gear they threw off. I was so happy to make it home in the mellow dawn light to the safety and quietude of my bed. I'd melded with the Universe in one more glorious celebration and I was satiated.

Then it was back to the existential challenge of Northcott Housing Ghetto. This week the Dept is coming to replace our lovely shower-heads with new gadgets that only piss out steam, as if we were sci-fi space cadets living in a rocket. The whole building is refusing to give up their lovely showers and are going on a collective strike, no officials are getting in our doors, it'll be the Paris Commune all over again, let's hope we beat it and Big Brother backs off, I need peace and solitude, life is too exciting.

Dance is Religion.

I was watching ABC television the other night and got blissed out by the kid's ballroom dancing championships, particularly at the end when the 7 year old boy and his inspired partner did a Latin jive, he had that extra spark, delighted in the dance, semi lost himself as if entranced and trully danced with spirit, and the girl matched his exilaration with joyful verve, they seemed to levitate as they skipped about, and they won their section of the national championships, for rythm with spirit is much hallowed.

Humanity has had a long love affair with 'dance', it's a telling part of what makes us the ebullient species we are, reinforcing our consciousness of being, then uplifting us out of alienating mundanity and melding us as one with the universe. Chimpanzees have been known to dance ecstatically when lightning-storms explode, and I suspect dance was humanity's first art-form, preceding rock painting and even music making, for moving the body rythmically matches the swaying of the natural environment, gets the heart pumping and the muscles rippling, a massage for body, mind and soul given by life in a crushing embrace. Thus 'dance' became entwined with the first religious awakenings.

When I was 7 Elvis Presley had just performed "Jailhouse Rock" and blown my burgeoning soul to 7th heaven with his hip-swinging, leg-swivelling raunch, and even tho dancing was considerd sissy I enthusiastically jumped up at any given opportunity, participating in my highschool folk-dancing classes and jumping about to the radio like Mick Jagger as I vacumed my mother's loungeroom floor. Then I was 12 and I'll never forget the look of chagrin on my father's face when at one of the family barbecues I performed a frenetic "twist", the hit dance of the moment, like a whirling-dervish I spun the other kids off the floor, and it was then he realised I was irrevocably 'gay', it was in my bones and leapt out outrageously when music beckoned it. (Not that all dancers turn out to be homo, but it sure provides that extra swish.)

Whatever the trend I jumped to it, the Surfie stomp, the Sharpie shuffle, the Mod shake, the Frug, Swim, Watusi and Go-go, disco dancing allowed everybody to share the charisma of pop-stars, and bodies were liberated to move free-form, with no clinging partner and staid formalities to obey. The hippies cut loose entirely, flinging themselves about in gay abandon, even clothes were discarded, no rules, just epileptic cavorting to psychedelic rock. What a fool one can look on the dance-floor, making the most idiotic of moves for the sniggering bemusement of the too-cool onlookers, but they're the ultimate bores, fuck being cool, I only want fun, dancing is a kind of extreme sport, super-exilarating, it's in the blood and I don't worry about playing the divine fool, the madness is my excuse.

At 18 I joined a modern dance troupe, jazz ballet and experimental movement the catchcry, we put on performances several times a year and my Nijinski nature took over, I danced lasciviously on stage in my jockettes with my cock semi-erect to the great embarrassment of my family who had proudly attended the show thinking I was doing a demure "Nutcracker Suite". I took dance seriously, it was enmeshed with my soul, it was my sport, hobby, religion and epiphany, and no celebration was replete without it. I'd like to say I've had 777 good times in my life, flying in a two-seater plane into the Simpson's desert, riding motor-bikes atop the Himalayas, jet-speed-boating up the Ganges River, walking the Minoan Labyrnth in Crete and meditating upon Notre Dame in Paris, yet of all these intense pleasures the 77 most mind-blowing and ecstatic usually involved dancing with an ebullient crowd on the dance-floor, Heaven at times got touched, Paradise entered, Nirvana experienced.

The first of these 77 exquisite epiphanies that I can remember, apart from all the pop-dancing as a teenager, happened when I was 23 on New Year's Eve, that ultimate pagan celebration, 1972/73 on the jungle beaches of Goa. I'd run away to India to find self-realization and ended up being feaked-out, joining the roving tribe of international freaks that layabout the temples and chai-shops, and and it was in Goa that we spent the winter, following the sun. We lived naked in grass huts, cooked communally and practiced yoga, made art, discussed philosophy and let it all hang out at the parties where the fruit salad served up was laced with massive doses of pure LSD. I unwittingly ate a huge serve then had the Universe melt-down upon me, we danced atavistically around a huge bonfire on Anjuna beach, leaping thru the flames, harkening back to our animal antecedents, and I transcended my materialist hang-ups and flew on a winged horse to the celestial realms where I recharged my inner-light. No party has ever quite equalled it tho there were many other fabulous peaks to reach.

When I finally crash-landed in Sydney in '77 it was for the New Year's bash at the Haymarket where AC/DC gave a free concert, I flipped in front of a bouncing Bon Scott and found myself washed-up in Darlinghurst the next day, never to leave. The Punk sub-cult exploded and swept me along, at the raw garage-band gigs the rambunctious crowd slam-danced, grappled, po-goed and thrashed, like riders of a rough surf we threw each other about, recieving black-eyes, bloody noses, falling to the floor and being stomped upon till a fellow Punk picked you up and threw you back into the fray, the electric-base guitar ripping your nerves into ecstacy, Punk was the ultimate dance-fun. Selina's rock'n'roll gladiator pit at Coogee Beach was the hottest venue, I clearly recall the bliss of head-banging to the Cramps, Primus, Butthole Surfers, Iggy Pop and Screaming Jay Hawkins, electric music was the ruling sub-cult and we were like worshippers at the fountainhead when surfing the electric sound-waves. The penultimate gig for me would have to be Johnny Lydon's "Public Image Limited" bringing down the roof at the Tivoli on George Street, New Year's Eve 1982 (?), Sylvia and I had eaten some gold-top mushrooms and then grappled so madly with the small crowd even the Rotten One got excited, warbling and hopping about, we all seemed to come in our pants together as our heads hit the ceiling.

(Not that this rant is an endorsement of drug abuse, I feel inebriation is part of pagan celebration, has been thru the long history of our evolution and involvement with a sacralised universe, it helps bring on the ecstatic trance, whether it's wine, ganjha or MDMA, but it should be only for sacred occassions and in moderation, like 4 times a year, not for habituation which is way too tedius. I was a naive young fool when I took psychedelics in the '70s, it was a renegade shrink who first gave them to me in 1969 to ameliorate my teenage depression, I got a taste for the intense visionary euphoria that LSD can induce and imbibed enough to take me on many psycho-celestial flights but not burn my braincells out. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone as it's a dangerous drug and can flip the weak-linked out irrevocably, especially the bad Acid that's pushed these days, everybody trying to harken back tothe good old days when LSD was pure, fresh and empowering, and getting poisoned bummers for their efforts. I always obey that famous Timothy Leary caveat, "dosage, set and setting", i.e. the right drug for your constitution, the people you feel safe to do it with, and the place where the partying happens should be indusive to joy.)

Then Heavy Metal and Grunge music took over and we rolled around in drunken melee in the mosh-pit, it felt like electric guitar reached an apotheosis that hasn't been beaten yet, our nervous systems short-circuited in bliss, electricity was god. As for the Ausie band that jumped me out of my skin the most, I have to admit it was the pop-rock of "The Divinyls" that pleasured me, I chased them all over the State, my favourite gig the one at the Ballina "wet T-shirt" dive up on the surfer's north coast, a gang of Byron Bay dykes had a brawl in front of Chrissie Amphlet and we all came away with bruises we danced and laughed so hard. And I'll never forget that New Year's party at Jellyheads garage in Chippendale, a sound-artist made quadrophonic electro symphonies that turned me on wickedly, a pity the artist committed suicide not long after when fame didn't come quick enough for him.

There was hip-hop and break-dancing, gang-fights went "Westside Story" and dance challenges proved hip superiority better than fisticuffs, just like in the movies we found each other on the dance floor and legged each other up to higher levels of frenetic rythm. By the '90s the crowds of punters wanted more participation with the music, they took over the gigs with the huge dance party phenomenom and the evolution of techno, "raves" and "doofs" were the rage and trance dancing as one collective million-legged creature ruled. I saw in the recent dance movie, "Rise", the ghetto kids announcing they'd invented fast dancing to beat the crime wave and tune into Christ, but they're kidding themselves, at the "doofs" we've been flipping the wig, moving like "the Flash", shimmy-shaking to the max while they were still on their mother's tit. I've thrown my arms to the sky at many "raves", as if we humans were at the Appocolypse at the end of history and were dancing our way to Heaven, when it all goes up in flames I will dance as the last of my "human" efforts to participate with an awesome universe.

Unforgettable of such collective flights was the techno party I attended in Lille France, in the same pavillion where I'd won the International Trash Film Award in '96. I didn't quite twig that the people of Northern France have an especial love for Aussies due to our forbear's heroics there in the World Wars, they feted me like a special emmissary from Freaksville, Auz, and I danced in their circle's centre buoyed up by their enthusiatic whistles. The best D.J. in France threw his switches and, still being ecstatic from my win, I tossed inhibitions to the techno winds and danced with the French crowd like pagans in the ancient oak forests, we got on top of a crashing wave, reached a peak, melted in euphoria as the movement meshed us together, no borders, no class, no race or religion, just human flesh tossed about by collective spirit. Soooo way-out!

I could wank on about high times forever, but I'll culminate this rave with the Goan trance parties of the '90s, coming full circle to where my ecstatic dance-quests got launched. For the last ten years I've milled with the international freak set at the Christmas/New Years festivities on the Indian beaches, the wildest scene imaginable, hordes of veritable jungle bunnies bopping frantically to the primeval techno beats as if in a prehistoric fertility rite, epileptic writhing on the dance floor like voodoo zombies, tramping rythmically like an army of love-crazed peace warriors, frolicing psychedelic cyber-punks with tattoos, dreadlocks, body-pierced, hair frizzed, bones thru noses, neo-primitives, all swaying and throbbing as one many-headed monster, a real but transitory Utopia found upon the dance floor, all differences shaken off, only the "dance" left to keep one going.

Nowadays there are even new-age gurus making a buck from conducting cosmic dance sessions, the lemmings needing direction, the rest of us just going for it on the dance-floor with only ourselves as gods, it doesn't need a neo-religion to explain it, 7 million years of evolution can't be wrong, we've always danced, long before churches and mosques were concieved of. Dance recharges the batteries of my soul to keep me going in this wearisome modern world, even old age can't keep this dancer down, on the dance-floor is the fountain of youth, is paradise.

(It's obvious from all this blather that for much of my life I've been a wastrel, a gypsy, a deadbeat adventurer. As a homo I never had to commit or be responsible, the Universe didn't need me to build society with a family. Like a real fucking idiot I did what Leary espoused, I tuned in, turned on and dropped out, as a freak I never belonged or fitted, and so I've gone on from one party to the next, working enough to get me there, living only for the fun, for the dance. Civilisation wouldn't exist if it was up to me, I'd just dance blissfully, indolently, while the world collapsed upon me. I don't give a shit about all humanity's accomplishments, Picasso and Einstein, it'll probably all go up in atomic smoke, and as for success, I danced it.)

Abandoned dancing is like being fucked by the Universe and given the ultimate orgasm, hopefully to be experienced this weekend at the Sleaze Ball, the Spring Equinox equivalent, and I'm ready for a melt-down, so get hip-hopping dear fellow Utopianists and maybe we'll fuck on the dance-floor together!

The F#*kwits are Running the Asylum!

 
I'm lost in the middle of my latest painting, acrylic on canvas, a complicated street scene of Kings Cross on New year's Eve 1980, multi-hued in rich primaries with fleuro edges, I'm burning the brain-cells in both lobes in a burst of creative bliss with the rest of my life falling to bits at my feet. Northcott Housing Ghetto has been quiet for a few weeks, since my scream fest Cursula and Bawl have kept their squabbles behind closed doors, and the deep night is silent and still, just what I need for intense concentration and craftsmanship. Eric the Viking continues howling his hyena laugh that creeps the flesh but after 16 years it has become mere background irritation to be blocked out. Northcott can be a peaceful idyll, with the gardens pruned at my back-window and the garbage scraped up from my front door and, thus untrammelled, I can create my feverish dreams in ink, paint and objects d'art.

The only exceptions to the general reign of peace are when the gay guys at the other end of the verandha go on the warpath, Dravid the Undertaker roaring threats thru Eric's door in lieu of some outrage like a turd on the footpath, or the Ice-zombies screeching blue-murder in the drive-way, or the Aboriginal tribe in the next building having a violent domestic with the breaking of glass and the echoing of harsh rebukes. Bawl next door has taken his bawling down a few notches, they whisper as they go in their door for fear of rousing the Kraken monster Toby. Bawl cant help being a scold, it's as if he's got Tourette's syndrome, carping on and on, and Cursula is a born victim, the constant nagging reminds her she's alive, and thankful to have a man hanging about her needy snatch.

Bawl is a master musician and often diverts his frenetic, bawling energy into guitar playing of the sweetest, most soulful effect, providing great background music to the dirt-opera that is Northcott. I was just being a mean little shit when I said he'd never had a job, his job is music making and like most artists, he's had a hard time making money from his art. He plays 24/7 amidst Cursula's piled up junk, and often accompanies an old girlfriend, Mia, around town with her strip-tease trapeze act, his guitar wailing up like slow sound-waves to keep her buoyant upon her tight-wire, slender long legs and pert fanny flying thru the air, the deathly white pallour of her smack gaze sweeping vacantly over her audience. But he's gone mad because of the pent-up rush of genius stagnating in his breast, like all the rest of us desperate artist-types, and like us howls from his cage in frustration.

It's not hard to go mad, trying to keep one's head above the sewers, pay the bills, put on a brave face when feeling weak, then face worldly exigencies, like beating schitzos off one's back on the streets or handling world news with some kind of equanimity. Much of the current affairs in the media of late tells me we didn't need to be in this global mess, from the 1950s on the planet could have gone for sustainable energies, environmental conservation, efficient cars and low-key consumerism, except the multi-nat corporations lobbied the various govts to legislate in their favour, everything's been done to maximise their profits, and we the people have been left to pay for the fuck-over. We wouldn't have the water or land degradation problems if the pollies had been doing their job all along, the fortune they get paid, the vast pensions and perks, and they stuffed up, didn't deserve a cent and still dont, it's infuriating.

I think about that Chinese billionaire who took his technology from Auz cause he couldn't get support here and now supplies China with solar-energy cells. He says industry and cities can be powered by solar installations but our pollies have no imaginatiuon and are bribed by the status quo, like nuclear power, oil and coal. I'm reminded how GMH killed off the electric car in the mid-nineties due to pressure from the oil and motor industries tho the cars were perfectly viable and so carbon dioxide continued to fuel global warming. (One woman powerd her car from solar cells on her roof and even sold energy back to the grid.) Al Gore in his movie reveals how the Ice-caps are melting and hints that the world could have been a different place except the Bush cabal achieved a "coupe d'etat" in those infamous elections, to favour big business above the people's and planet's needs. A right-wing revolution from Reagan's years onwards has taken over the world, wars rage and millions of people are maimed, tortured and murdered, storms tear the planet to bits and drought starves the masses, and much of this didn't need to be, it was all for the greed of a few, it's maddening. The fuckwits have indeed taken over the asylum and they've been ruining it for the last fifty years, and been paid well for their efforts.

(After writing this the media reports that the Bush administraton is about to do a policy U-turn in the face of global-warming disasters, but I suggest it's too late, the reigns should be handed over to Gore and co forwith, and the Bush cabal sealed within their nuclear fall-out shelters to keep the planet safe.)

In the face of this irrationalism and suffering many people can't cope, turn schitzo and take it out on the rest of us plebs on the streets. The poor Piccolo Cafe has become freak-zone central, the flip-outs zeroing in on that hole in the wall as their refuge, social club and psycho-therapy clinic. Vitto got on TV again last week in a humanist doco about people relating, the Cafe is famous but none of the nice videographers, TV hosts or trendy musicians who have their clips shot there quite realise the hell Vitto and family are put thru day after day dealing with the mental breakdowns of their sometimes customers. Lately Ayesha the dragon-lady drag-queen has increased her temper-tantrums, she wafts about like Gloria Swanson in her ratty Salvo cast-offs and throws hissy-fits over the smallest things, as if she's a movie star who's allowed any peccadillo, in her dementia she even kicked a little girl at a kiddie's birthday party, the bloke in Ayesha resurfacing as she's never actually had that little willie chopped off.

Worst and saddest flip-out of them all is Judy, the Thalidomide baby, who cant get enough love and seems to have nowhere to lead her life as she wants to spend it 24/7 at the Piccolo Cafe, hanging about with hang-dog eyes desperate for attention and humanity. No matter how many times she's been asked to go home she hangs about all day and late into the night, lighting her ciggies with her one foot, sometimes detaching her wooden leg and sunning it beside her, she's an outlandish sight and possible turns customers off, fewer people come for coffee when she's waving her flippers about, Vitto and family only have Judy's disconsolate face to gaze upon, and they're tearing their hair out, she's driving them nuts. She's been parked on the edge of the city by her family who are at the end of their tether and daily she crosses the vast urban desert to squat in the oasis that is the Piccolo, she'd sleep there if she could, somehow the seedy red-light district warms the cockles of her heart. The Piccolo family have given her lifts home, called family and friends to come get her, even called the Mental Crisis team to cart her away, but back she comes the next day and continues to fall apart on the footpath, literally.

Vitto is numb with exhaustion as the Piccolo freak-show trundles along, I try not to laugh as it's sad, the world is sad, humans en masse are expendable it seems. Things didn't have to come to this, we old hippies really hoped Utopia was in the making, but the fascists were more powerful, they owned the machines and they had their counter-revolution, and now we're all being ridden over, the fuckwits are bringing down the asylum upon our heads, and in parliament they've just voted themselves a pay rise, and I'm mad as hell. I think I'll scream from my window for awhile like Peter Finch in "Network", that'll fix it.

Runaway Train.

I just got back from my runaway trip to Melbourne, the sweet funky city of my youth, where people seem more friendly and the atmosphere more bohemian, and still I was glad to come back to my beloved Sydney, cruel mistress of my heart, cutting edge metropolis that cuts one to the quick, the struggle reaffirming the exhilaration of being alive.

My niece took me to a fantastic exhibition of Picasso, "Love and War - 1935 to 1945", umpteen oil paintings, colour pencil sketches and etchings, with photographs by his paramour Dora Mae recording the evolution of their creation. I was swept off my gnarled feet, trully inspired, almost stopped in my tracks as far as my own art is concerned, what is there left to achieve after Picasso? But he could have said the same thing about Bosch or the prehistoric cave paintings of Lasceaux, each of us has to compulsively carry on regardless, there's always contemporary times and mythologies to express. Then we went to a drive-in movie theatre to see a horror film, "Silent Hill", which gets 6 "Dings" on my shlockometer, for monsters, gore, creepiness and especially weird soundtrack. We got very stoned in the car and laid-back, the eerie music enough to take us deep into the Unconscious.

I had many counter-meals in good old Aussie pubs and sweet reunions with my teenage friends, who love me regardless of my stupidities, even if I turned out to be a serial killer they would still love me and come to my succor, I'm sure. At a low-key art show I met an old friend I'd had a fight with in cyber-space, really dumb act on my part, getting peeved because he didn't show me enough attention, and now we've had a raproachement, it made me so happy as I hate losing friends more than losing front teeth, if only I could find all those other friends I've fucked up over the years, I would sleep more soundly.

And I visited my old mother, 83 and still kicking strong, she lives in a seaside pensioner town which takes forever to get to but is beautiful with it's panorama of open sea and rain clouds rolling in to refresh the soul. I've never come out as a "gay" to my mother, she's "ocker" working class and too old to deal with the shock of my"deviance" tho I get the feeling she's always suspected there's something 'different' going on as I always look outlandish and lead such an adventurous, peripatetic life. I just don't want to unsettle her in her dotage, she's always going on about "Those awful gays in Sydney, the things they get up to, they even rape old women!" I don't correct her misunderstandings, it's too much hard work, I change the subject and prattle on about crappy TV shows and the AFL footie. When "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" came on TV I quickly used the R.C. to switch channels, I just don't need the tension.

I stayed with my sister-in-law, Margaret, someone I'd befriended before my brother met her, and who's been one of my 7 best friends ever since, always supportive, always understanding, without such friends life wouldn't be worth living, it's especially important to me to have life-long friendships, not 1 year romances that then burn out and turn to cinders, we all consume each other like electric appliances here in high-capitalism and it saddens me enormously to see friends fade into the sunset. I read a Melbournian homo writer while there, Christos Tsiolkas' "Dead Europe", an interesting read, a bit weirded out at times, a poofter who eats a strange woman's menstrual blood in the toilet of a train (???) and other such nonsense, but I loved his Greek folklore, Melbourne reminiscences and homo affairs in Prague, makes me want to go to eastern Europe, sounds like a sex-addicts paradise, I'm always running away from my banal, dried up existence, running away from myself.

More pubs and cafes on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, more sweet reciprocated endearments between old friends, and then I was back to Sydney on the tediously long train journey, so arduous I flipped and had an argument with one of those officious old gronks who rule the train like mini Stalins, telling him I hoped a hole would open up in the earth and swallow the "Country Link" train, him screeching, "Stop complaining, stop complaining!" Then announcements were made over the intercom apologising for the delays and we're not to blame the carriage attendants who were only doing their job, and after all, the train was now speeding and making up for lost time. I pissed myself laughing, a little bit of whingeing can get things moving. Back to Sydney, deviant capitol, refuge for deadbeats and old cons like me, and the Piccolo Cafe where old Vitto sourly welcomed me back with his eternal lament, "Don't put shit on me!"

Who Took the Sleaze Out of the Sleaze Ball?

A few years after the '78 riot that got the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardis Gras Festival on the move, a September party was instigated to keep the queer spirit aflame and raise funds for the parade at summer's end, and this party was dubbed "the Sleaze Ball." For a decade it was the one night when anybody (who felt to) could let it all hang out and the rest of us would only laugh. Sleaze Ball became the quintessential freak-zone, transitory capitol of the Underground Republic where all sorts gathered to meet, dance, fuck, deviate, preen, deconstruct and tear the envelope, a libertarian space of free desire and public display with mutual consent and safe practices as the only parameters.

And those balls were very "sleazy", with real freaks crawling out of their office buildings and public-service cubicles for the one big saturnalia of the year: obese dominatrix with breasts flopped from tight corsets and shaved fannies gaping thru crotchless panties; geriatric poofs in military leather armour with half tumescent cocks (that looked like burst sausages) poking hopefully from chain-harnesses; midgets done up as bugs from outer-space leading Muscle-Marys in skimpy togas around on a leash; genderless geeks wrapped in gaffa-tape like mummies and pissed on by dykes in fire-men outfits; 7 foot drag queens in shimmering Marie-Antoinette ball gowns stomping on shrieking fags in lycra budgie-smuggler shorts; the grossly obese, the cadaverous skeletal, short hippos and giant truckies, in tou-tous and Speedos, feather wraps and leather capes, outlandish walking/writhing sculptures that ran the gamut of variegated weirdos, twirps, creeps, devos and freaks ever to collect in one place, a trully rambunctious crowd where anything goes, if you like it that way, loose, fast and bent.

But like all things under the moon, the scene changd over the years, reached a peak of funky, costumed ribaldry and then went into decline, the edge worn off, the thrill jaded, the kinks straightened out, the sleaze cleansed so that nice het couples could court and propagate in safety, whatever, the fun slipped away, the outrage flattened into depression as most of the 'gay crowd' got older, wiser and harder to please. Last year's "Sleaze Ball" was the most anti-climactic of them all, it seems costs had to be cut as there were none of the provocative artworks strung from the ceiling or porno videos flashed from the walls; no freaks hired to entertain on the edges of the crowd; not even the traditional bleachers to chill out upon, meet friends, chat with strangers and scope the thrashing dance-floor, no seating whatsoever, just bare concrete floor that threatened to give piles and quell eroticism.

Thank nogod for the drag queens as they're the only ones who keep the outre spirit alive, they put on their usual stunning extravaganza floor-show to excite the senses and twitch the genitals, with a blonde stud out-front doing a crotch-grabbing song and dance number that got the crowd rocking. Otherwise the night was ordinary, a glorified disco dance-club with ubiquitous shirtless gays dancing politely to banal pop hits, and nobody talking, too snooty and cooler than thou, that superficial, empty aspect of Sydney taking over, many running away to Melbourne for quirky relief in the face of it.

Maybe there had been too many drug overdoses or unwelcome attentions from lascivious sex-addicts and the "gay marshalls" had to crack down, somehow the 'sleaze' got lost and a rather staid night-out for good Christians instigated in it's stead. Most pagan celebrations eventually get drained of their original inspiration by fatigue and civilization and somehow have to be reinvented, reinvigorated, revolutionised all over again, and that's what the organisers are claiming for this year's "Sleaze Ball", yet another "new look", or harkening back to it's origins, a true 'Ball' where people dress up in crazy costumes and swan about like vampiric ghouls on the 'night of the dead'. I hope it happens, I swore I wouldn't go again but as it's for a good cause, to raise funds for the Mardis Gras, and there's no other bad-arsed happening quite like it, I guess I'll give it another burl, for old time's sake.

I've been many times since it's inception and one of the best, fun nights I've ever had in my life happened at the Sleaze Ball, quite a few years ago now but still shining bright in my lexicon of wild, soul-melting experiences. It was the night Grace Jones performed live, the exilaration peaked and all since has been a down-hill slide in comparison. As always, I didn't quite know what I was up for, I wanderd into the Horden Pavillion like Hansel and Gretel in one soul, and not too long into the proceedings, a friend sidled up to me and, with a cryptic smile, asked me to open my mouth. He popped a tab of ACID onto my tongue, me not too sure what he had done, and I tripped away into the heaving crowd, reality slowly dissolved to my ebullient surprise, and the dancing punters all morphed into exotic, alien life-forms, garishly shining and kaleidoscoping like cubist icons. I went semi-blind from the explosion of lights and shapes, stumbled into frenzied dancing queens and was gently pushed onto others like a pin-ball in a machine and thus bounced across the whole dance-floor.

I found myself pressed up against a huge stage, hemmed in by beaming, drooling fairies, and suddenly the floor show erupted in my face, a dance-troupe of gay boys and girls hip-hopping to a bevy of tall drag queens done up like Las Vegas show-girls who lip-synched flesh-rousing, heart-quaking techno-pop, the crowd jumping to the beat, ecstacy flooding the group mind. I was worked up into a peak of pagan exultation when a troupe of nuns from the "Order of Perpetual Indulgence" swished onto the stage and twirled about, in and out of the drags and pop-dancers, and in my hallucinated madness I envisioned the nuns carry on a giant idol of Lucifer, Angel of Light, the Horned One, consort to the Goddess, who impregnates the Mother of the Universe, Kali, with his cosmic phallus. I swore they even carried on a giant erect dildo and pranced about it in adoration, nuns partnered with drag queens, spunky dancers in hot-pants miming syncopated sex on the floor around them. I was blown away, into intestellar fairy dust, the 'gay' scene had come a long way in it's evolution.

(I remembered the 1986 Mardis Gras Festival when I entered a pastoral painting into the egalitarian group art exhibition of a psychedelic Pan playing his flute surrounded by a dancing ring of celebrants of all sexes and colours. The other paintings were of headless male nudes and vases of flowers, my painting was much frowned upon, hidden up the back, too provocative and satanic for the 'straight' gay organisers.)

Weeks later I met one of the gay nuns and I congratulated her effusively on the outrageous pagan floor-show and she looked at me dumbfounded, not understanding what I was talking about, she swore they'd done no such thing, no Lucifer idol, no giant phallus, just a swirling dervish dance-act, it seems I had imagined the whole fucking thing, but I don't see how.

Anyway, after the floor show I skipped off to meld with the bopping crowd, dancing my limbs loose, my uptight mind into quiescent love and joy. I wanted badly to go take a piss but like Helen Kellar I had to feel my way about, I couldn't see thru the strobing lights and pulsating bodies, the usual freak acts of cretins being whipped and dragged about on leashes wandered past, I marvelled at the genius costumes, the punter's true natures exposed by their outlandish outfits. I asked directions and was kindly pushed in the direction of the toilets, but once inside I found a long queue for the cubicles, and a gang of crotchless old geeks waiting by the urinal, lusting after a yellow water-fall to splash upon them, gazing hopefuly into my hallucinating eyes, their ugly little willies half erect from that awful poison they inject into their penile flesh to get it up. I shuddered and hid in a corner, clutching my own worn-out cock protectively, thankful there were security guards just outside the door ready to pour cold water on any unwelcome hanky-panky.

When I emerged back into the seething celebration a mate found me and took me by the hand, leading me aggressively thru the crowd, into another pavillion and on, push, shove, squeeze, he got me right upto a small stage, like a boxing-ring, in the centre of the room, where we clung to the ropes. Then Grace Jones came on, she did nearly all the numbers from her hit album, strutting, stalking, growling, purring, lying across a swivell arm-chair as she crooned our souls to her feet, she was hot, hot, hot. I looked right into her face and crotch throughout the whole performance and was mesmerised. For "Walking in the Rain" she wore a chic, short see-thru rain-coat that she dramatically flung aside like a stripper as she mooned about, and some nasty little fag on the sidelines stole it, much to her annoyance, afterwards in the VIP room she nearly tore out second arseholes for the star-struck organizers. I myself was swooning ecstatically, the night was repleat with wonder, I was totally satiated, a good time was trully had.

My mate had disappeared to the toilets on and off and told me he'd been sodomised by three seperate guys in the cubicles, I suppose an experience others also had enjoyed, but for me it sounded yukky, not my bag, I was glad to escape from "the Sleaze" with my arse intact, not that anybody would want it, I just like to stay inviolate, especially when I'm tripping, you never know what kind of monster will get a hold of you. With Paramedics, security guards, gay marshals and organizers touring the premises continuously, it is not a danger zone, more a freak zone, a democratic, liberated space and no one has to evince shame. I'm not personally into "sleaze" as a public spectacle for my participation but I dont mind voyeurising other indulgents, if it's not too icky, and that's why I hope the "Sleaze Ball" reclaims it's bent edge, gets down dirty and funky, fun wasn't meant to be squeaky-clean, a bit of deviance makes the world go round. See you there boogying hard, I hope.

Nearly Murdered at Murderith House.

One more tale from the "industry of dying" before I forget it, hard to stomache as it might be, it's what channels into my experience of latter-day reality. It's from when I worked a few months at a place I mischieviously call "Murderith House", only because I nearly got murdered there, otherwise it wasn't too bad, the oldies, the veggies, the "existentially challenged" were looked after well enough, the DON kept it ship-shape and the 'owner' bothered to keep her eye on the home's proper functioning. The level of actual care depended on the nurses and they come in all varieties, lazy and indifferent, assiduous and caring. I was just doing holiday and sick relief so I was interloping on the territory and routine practices of the permanent night nurse, as always I was a bit like a child in the wilderness, kind of a patsy. The only way a night nurse can handle a regular job, year in, year out, is to have it all worked so they can sleep a few hours in the night, otherwise their lives trully fall to bits. I don't sleep, I watch.

At the back of the nursing home was a dementia unit named St.Sebastions, my favourite saint and I thought it sounded sweet and peaceful, forgetting the 'slings and arrows' of his martyrdom. I worked a few disparate nights there and it seemed easy and quiet, the frail demented stuck to there rooms, except for Nazio Grotto, a burly octogenarian who wandered the corridors at midnight but went cheerfully back to his bed when I diplomatically asked him to. The regular nurse, Mandy, decided to give up Wedsday nights there and I was asked to take her place, resignedly showing up to do my 'duty', it was quite boring in St.Sebastions.

When I came onto the ward I noticed Nazio Grotto was much agitated, pacing the corridor, waltzing in and out of the rooms, and when he spotted me his face fell and his chest swelled. He had a pathetic crush on R.N. Mandy, doting on her, following her about like a puppy, her encouraging the attention, possibly to keep him under control, but "inappropriate behaviour" according to another nurse, older and more experienced. He must've been waiting excitedly for her to come on to tell her of the day's happy events and instead he got ugly, bald old me, an abominable gay male nurse who didn't let him have his run of the unit in the wee hours of the night. He had always been a 'ladie's man' and was notorious for touching up the female staff and chucking them under the chin and chanting, "Belissimo", and on clapping his beady eyes on me he was ropeable.

That day some stupid "diversional therapist" or dull spark nurse up at Murderith House had thrown a make-fun celebration, "Christmas in July", with decorations, carol singing, special dinner and dancing, the dementia patients brought up to swan about with the other gerries, Nazio getting to dance with as many spunky females as he could grab a hold of. According to the Sister who handed over to me, Nazio came back to St. Sebastions "as if drunk, singing his head off", nobody telling him and the others it wasn't really Christmas, he possibly expected his family to visit with presents and more lovely dinner, pacing about furiously until 9.30PM when I signed on, lone monstrous me, not the lovely Mandy.

There was another mad old patient agitated into an hysterical fit, Jane Klepto, her daily routine had been upset by her loyal husband visiting at a different hour and she rushed around the dementia unit shrieking and flapping her hands like Lady MacBeth wringing them of blood. This got Nazio worked up further, and as I moved about on my duties he shouted, "I don't like him. Get rid of him !" I wasn't impressed that he wandered the corridors after 1.ooAM, even going in and out of other resident's rooms, who knows what he'd get up to if the RN was not vigilant, watching everything, and he never liked me watching his movements and giving him directions. I asked him nicely to go to bed as he and Jane were exciting each other, but he lumbered off back up the corridor and then another resident added to the furore, Elizabeth, herself a retired RN, wandering from her room moaning, "Where am I? Who am I? I don't know what to do next? Where should I go?" She tried innumerable times to go out the back door, setting off the alarms, running to the front gate onto the open road, and I would have to plead, cajole and mollify till she allowed me to lead her back into the minimalist bau-haus brick unit.

Nazio growled, Joan shrieked and Elizabeth moaned and I grew distraught as I also had three people dying and I had to keep a close eye on them to assist them on their final journey. Two of the dying shared Nazio's room and I had to go in there throughout the night to watch them. As` I was hovering over their beds to observe their breathing Nazio charged in screaming ,"Get out of my room, bastardo!" Without futher ado he started throwing punches at me, heavy ones that I constantly had to duck and weave to escape. While Nazio was over 80 years old, he was built like a rhinocerus, a peasant from Sicily diagnosed as "paranoid dementia", thick and squat like a Neanderthal caveman with arms like clubs. He spoke hardly any English in his delerium, screaming, "Bastardo! Bastardo!" repeatedly as he swung his rock-hard fists at me, I grew weary of the dance and grabbed both his wrists in mid-air, holding him off for a moment as I demanded he desist from hitting me. He threw me aside like a rag-doll and I escaped out into the nurse's station where he followed me with fists waving, mouth cursing and reptillian eyes aflame.

He kept taking swipes at me which I eluded, then he grabbed a plastic bottle of Sorbolene and managed to hit me with it a few times but it was soft and didn't hurt. "Bastardo! Bastardo!", he howled and thumped his chest just like a gorilla, it really freaked me out and with his yellow teeth grinding and the occassional gobs spat upon me he was monstrous in the extreme, like something out of my worst nightmare and I could not placate him. My assistant, a beautiful Polynesian woman, tried every request and trick in the book but he could not be calmed down, his rage in fact increased with time, like he realised he could finish me off no worries. He tried to grab the telephone to hit me with but I wrested this from his grip, he kept grabbing at it, we wrestled about, I pulled away and he staggered back, then eye-balled the fire extinguisher hanging on the wall. If that was bounced off my head I was dead. For the first time in my long nursing career I experienced a raging patient that could not be calmed down and I turned to the last resort, I rang for an Ambulence to take him off to a psyche unit at a major hospital. As I tried to give the operator directions Nazio rushed back and attempted to rip the phone from me and we continued wrestling over it, me, him and the assistant shouting, sqwawling, hissing, quite a drama to tune into, and so the operator called the police as well.

Nazio continued to throw punches at me and most of them I managed to duck, he'd cornered me behind the nurse's desk and eventually two swipes connected, one a crashing blow to the ear, the other a stunner to the cheek, so hard I wept from the pain and shock, I'm too old to keep taking such punishment, life's been one long bash-up. I danced around him and prayed for the Ambulence to come, but as soon as the crew stormed thru the doors, a veritable SWAT team with them, Nazio instantly turned into Mr. Nice-guy, standing back like an innocent, ingratiating smile on his ugly mug, and every time the Paramedic asked him a question he shrugged his shoulders as if he couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. I explained to the 4 cops and 2 paramedics what had gone on, the whole day's crazy events, and they seemed sceptical that such an nice old man would run amok, then my assistant backed me up and I showed them my bruised cheek and red swollen ear and they gave him sour looks from then on, especially when I told them of his previous history of violence, other residents being hit and bruised. There was the usual blonde pony-tailed female cop standing at the ready and we eyed each other with bemusement, it's not often in my life I've called the cops to my aid and she knew it.

They took him off for a night's chill-out in the padded cell of a psyche-ward and I was glad to see the last of his saggy, rhinocerus arse. I still had Jane Klepto to appease and Elizabeth to put back to bed with soothing orientation. I had to ring Nazio's family to tell them of the ghastly night and his daughter and her boyfriend came breathlessly to St. Sebastion's about 3.00 AM to question me on the unusual behaviour of their dear old man. Forget that they'd put him there because they couldn't deal with his intrusiveness and violence anymore, I had to tell them about lovely Mandy and Christmas in July and poor Jane Klepto , yet they looked at me as if I wasn't the full quid, that I simply could not nurse a case like Nazio and must be incompetant. They didn't want to know about his inappropriate behaviour, that he restlessly wandered the unit nightly without sedation, I guess they complained to the DON the next day and I was never given a shift there again, they preferred that Agency nurses worked there regardless that they slept.

My hours and pay were cut and I was offered no "worker's compensation", I had to take the next night off due to shock and anxiety but wasn't given any sick-leave, as a 'casual' worker I was merely cannon-fodder, to be thrown aside as my use-by date dictated, a paying resident was more important. I thus felt no allegiance and quit, I did my best and was nearly murdered for my trouble, and that's why I mischieviously call the place "Murderith House". I know this comes across as yet another fuck-up in the nursing home trade and I indeed may be an incompetant nurse, whatever, I try to be a cool dude and this was my experience, human society is full of horror stories and I keep copping them! I won't be nursing again for awhile, if ever, I prefer to be a deadbeat artist, wandering the globe's backroads, I'll probably die alone in a gutter somewhere far off, and I wont have a care in the world, having done my dash.