005 The disciple Part 1
‘Kid, nobody should ever die alone.’
This was the warning that the Painted Man gave me before he disappeared. Back then, I was new at this. I was still no kid, mind you. But he always treated me like I was. This was about six months ago. But I’m still on the streets. I haven’t heeded his warning. And I’m still gonna die alone. The Painted Man means well. He just doesn’t understand.
I’m homeless.
I left home with only a bag of clothes and the cash that I managed to borrow from my parents. I couldn’t live there anymore. They were going to kill me. I know this. I don’t know how but I just do. It’s not like I hear voices, but sometimes I just know things. And so I left. A new city. A new life. A night in a bus shelter.
I met the Painted Man my first week on the street. He said to me ‘you’re homeless, you’re either sick or stupid.’
I said I was neither. He said ‘I can teach you to not be so stupid.’
And so he did. I’d see him most days. He’d tell me how to get fed. How to keep warm. How to stay alive, basically. We told each other stories. He said it didn’t matter if they’re true or not. I told him about how my parents want to kill me. I told him about how I know things. He told me he was Elvis. He told me how he faked his own death. He told me that ten years ago, he had lost an Elvis look-alike contest to a Japanese Elvis impersonator named Takeshi.
‘Kid, the truth don’t matter much. My myth has become bigger than I am. Imagine waking up one day to find your parents prefer to have your next door neighbour’s kid over you in their house.’
Every one of his stories ends with a moral or at least some sort of point. My stories end with ‘so kill me now.’ I don’t actually mean that, mind you. Sometimes I do. But I’m smart enough to know that if I really wanted to be dead, it couldn’t be so hard. But I just say it.
My friend, the Painted Man, is old. He has tattoos all over his body. On his arm he has one that says ‘arm’. On his forehead is one that says ‘head’. He has ‘leg’ written in green on his left leg and ‘neck’ with faux embossing on the right side of his neck. I asked him once why he had all those tattoos done. He said ‘I like to tell it like it is.’
He said ‘Kid, I don’t have a name no more. But at least some parts of me still do.’
He said ‘Kid, go home.’
He said ‘Kid, nobody should ever die alone.’
And the next day he didn’t come to see me. And I haven’t seen him since. That was a month ago.
I know now why the Painted Man befriended me. I know now because he is gone. And I am alone and bored. I needed help. He needed the company. He said once ‘what is friendship but the mutual fulfillment of needs?’ I said I didn’t know. He said ‘you weren’t meant to answer that kid – it was rhetorical.’
It’s what kills you, you know. It’s not the cold. Or the wet. Or even the danger. There are ways around all of that. But boredom can’t be beat. You wake up to a bright warm sunshiny day. But you have nothing to do. No money to spend. No food to snack on. No decent place to take you in.
So kill me now.
For the past week I’ve been passing time with a big bag of porn that I found lying by the side of the road. At nights, I’m in public bathrooms jacking off to Chinadolls. To Jane Lee, 18 year-old high school student (who suspiciously looks at least 25), being taken advantage of by her PE teacher. Or it might be Victoria. Russian, 23, double D. Enjoys dancing and singing. Likes tall brawny men. Turned off by arrogant and superficial men. Her wish is that a man could appreciate her as much he can appreciate his power tools.
Victoria smiles at me. One hand playing with her left nipple. The other between her legs. I take it she’s shy.
Trust me when I say that there is not a sadder sight than a homeless man getting off on discarded porn.
This is what passes for a life.
So kill me now.
This is me crying by the side of the street.
This is the heavens opening.
This is the rain.
This is my god crying for me.
These are two young women with backpacks, a book, an umbrella
This is one of them extending her hand to me.
This is her smile.
This is my life being saved.
004 Cleaning up
She hadn’t ever been to Ethan’s apartment until this morning. It’s been a week since the police had found his skeletal remains on the roof of the building tied up to a chair and charred to the bone. Only his dental records could identify him.
The last time that Sara spoke to her brother was about six months ago. Truth is, they never got along. They lived together for 22 years and when their parents died in a boating accident, they both took their inheritance and went in separate ways. Sara got married last year to Peter, who had been considering priesthood until he met her.
Sara is petite, bubbly, conventionally pretty, and at age 29 could easily pass for 21. Meanwhile, the seminary offered a lifetime away from such petite, bubbly, conventionally pretty women as Sara. Despite his strong faith, the choice wasn’t that hard.
Ethan came to the wedding and had visited Sara one more time since, just after they moved into their new house. They were amicable by then. They loved each other even. They just weren’t friends.
The police had done all they could with the place. Sara was there only to clean up. She packed the family photos and whatnot in boxes and put them in her car. The computer and the camera she also took. Searches through his wardrobes revealed little. He lived a very Spartan life. His fridge was practically empty. Only two things struck her as significant.
The candles scattered all over the place (most of them melted down). And the porn. Ethan, as it turned out, had quite an impressive (or decidedly unimpressive, as was the case to Sara) collection of skin mags. Everything from Playboys to hardcore. All carefully filed and stored along the back of his wardrobe behind his clothes.
There must be so much more she doesn’t know about him.
After around an hour there, Sara left having been satisfied that she had taken everything that she wanted. She had also packed all the magazines into garbage bags and discretely dumped them on the side of a road near a park on the way home. She felt better about things.
Later in the evening she went to a group meeting that the detective had recommended to her. It was called ‘Dealing with a loss’. Sara thought privately that ‘Coping’ would have been a better choice of word than ‘Dealing’ but she made no mention of that to the group. The venue was an old church hall in the inner west.
‘Hi, I’m Darren and my mother passed away 2 months ago.’
‘Hi, I’m Nina. My husband died from a car accident a few weeks ago. I don’t like to count how many.’
Most of the group would probably come only a few times. It was just an avenue to reach out, really. Some have stayed much longer. They come every week for months and months to cry and tell the same stories over and over again to a bunch of people they don’t know.
‘Hi, I’m Sara, and my brother was found burnt to death on the roof of his building. The police have yet to find who was responsible. And four years back, both my parents were killed in a boating accident.’
For a few moments, there was silence.
‘And Sara… how do you feel about that?’
When they broke up into pairs, Sara was approached by a solemn-looking man in his late 30s whose sticker said ‘My name is Max.’ He told her about how his sister had died of AIDS. Max spoke so lovingly about her that Sara began to feel a little guilty since she could hardly even let out any tears during Crying time. She was affected, to be sure. She just somehow remained so outwardly unemotional about it all.
‘It’s OK to cry.’ Max said as he was hugging her and stroking her hair. She was more hoping to hear that it’s OK not to.
After everybody else had left, Sara helped to pack up the tables and chairs with the therapist, Max and a man named Kwayne, who had been coming to the group for about six months now.
‘The important thing is to keep yourself busy’, said Kwayne.
Sara was thinking it hasn’t worked too well for him. Then felt guilty about it.
With the doors closed behind them, the therapist and Kwayne waved goodbye and left to their cars. Sara was just about to do the same, when Max stopped her.
‘It was really good tonight talking to you. I really feel much better.’
‘That’s really good to hear, Max. I hope things work out for you.’
‘For both of us.’
‘Yes. For both of us’, Sara said with a smile.
‘So I was wondering if you wanted to talk some more. It’d be nicer outside of the group environment… maybe over dinner or a coffee.’
‘Oh, I’m not really free. But thanks for the offer. I’ll see you around then.’ She turned to walk to her car.
‘Then perhaps another time?’ Max lightly grabbed her arm.
‘Um… I really have to go. My husband is waiting for me.’
‘Oh. Alright then. I guess I’ll see you around.’
Max smiled. A facial expression somewhere between embarrassed and annoyed. And then he turned to leave. Sara hesitated for a moment. She thought up three different possible scenarios for what had just happened before walking back to her car.
At home, Peter had prepared for her a bubble bath. She was glad he hadn’t gone with the scented candles as well. As he was preparing dinner, she got undressed, slipped in and closed her eyes. Sara suddenly became acutely aware of herself. In her own skin. And she was comfortable with that.
They had dinner mostly in silence. Peter told her that he had arranged for the funeral to be on Friday. Sara said to him ‘Thank you.’
The food was delicious, she thought.
‘How was your day?’ he had asked her. She said it was OK. Peter smiled, gently squeezed her hand and left the table to the kitchen.
Sara wanted an early night tonight. And after Peter had finished cleaning the dishes, he followed her up to the bedroom.
‘I’m sorry for putting you through this,’ Sara told him. She was already in bed. ‘You probably don’t even understand why since Ethan and I never even got along.’
‘No. Of course I understand. He’s your brother.’
‘It just feels like God is personally and systematically trying to assassinate my family… oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to…’
‘I wouldn’t let him harm a hair on your head.’
‘You mean God?’
He smiled and got into bed with her.
‘Dear, you’re a Catholic. Are you sure you’re supposed to say things like that?’ she teased.
Peter turned off the night light and turned to her in the dark.
‘I’m your husband. Of course I’m supposed to say things like that.’
003 Dust
Ethan must’ve dozed off. He woke up to the sound of the door banging.
‘Open up! I know you’re in there!’
If hindsight were possible, Ethan would’ve gone back to sleep as he had done every other time in the past week that people had been banging on his door. But this was his friend Matt. His best friend, Matt. Matt, at least, deserved his acknowledgement.
So Ethan got off the sofa, put on a blanket over his head and walked to the door.
‘Is there anyone else there with you?’
Matt hesitated.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Why was there a hesitation?’
‘There’s no one else here man. Now let me in.’
Ethan opened the door and let Matt inside the apartment, checking outside quickly to see if anyone else was around. Inside, it was dark. Only candles provided light. Ethan locked the door and went into the bedroom. Matt followed behind. He brought two bottles of wine.
‘What’s with all the ambiance?’
‘I haven’t paid the electricity bill.’
‘And you look pale. You look sick. Are you OK?’
‘I haven’t been eating much. And if you want to see sick, you shoulda seen this girl last night. She was eating a pizza, threw up, and then passed out in her own puke.’
If Ethan had the advantage of hindsight, he probably wouldn’t have let Matt inside. And he probably wouldn’t have let him sit down with him and open the wine.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you but this will cure it,’ said Matt.
Everyone had been wanting to know what was wrong with Ethan. For a whole week now he had locked himself at home. Not coming to work. Not answering his phone. Or the door. Ethan had made himself disappear.
‘You wanna know why?’
Matt did want to know why.
‘I’ve become a vampire. I got bitten last week by this chick I met at Hunter Bar.’
‘Hunter Bar. Right. Is that the new fashionable spot for the undead? I thought it was just dead.’
‘I’m serious! I’m a vampire.’
Thing was, Ethan did try very hard to sound sincere. But they had downed the first bottle by then so trying hard didn’t necessarily produce the desired results. Ethan had always been a compulsive liar. This didn’t exactly help his cause.
He then went on to explain how he now couldn’t go in direct sunlight or he’d burn. And how he had to drink blood to survive. He said he’d only killed one person that whole week.
‘That’s why I look so pale.’
Matt laughed at this and so did Ethan but he didn’t know why. And he continued to talk of his supposed new condition for about another half an hour or so until he fell asleep. Maybe letting Matt into his place wasn’t so bad. But drinking the wine certainly was.
If only he had the advantage of hindsight, he wouldn’t have woken up with a hangover and tied to a chair on the roof of his building. His best friend, Matt, wouldn’t be there standing against the wall drinking coffee and eating a croissant, waiting for sunrise.
‘Matt? What are you doing?’
‘I’m proving to you that you’re not a vampire.’
‘What? Matt, let me go!’
‘You really gotta stop this. You have to stop telling stories. Making up crap to cover for whatever hole you’ve gotten yourself into.’
‘Untie me Matt!’
‘So what is it this time? You have debts? Girl problems?’
‘The problem is,’ Ethan shouted, ‘that I am a friggin’ vampire!’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Let! Me! Go!’
Pauses for emphasis. Ethan was, by then, to the point of going berserk.
‘Remember the time when you told everyone that you were being institutionalised for schizophrenia when you were actually just on holidays for a month?’
‘I just used that to break up with Cheryl!’
‘But you told everybody. Including me.’
‘I t was for consistency’s sake!’
‘I came here to help out a friend who is obviously in need of help. And what do I get? Some cock and bull story of you turning into a vampire. Well I’ve had enough man! Lies and excuses are all I ever get from you!’
‘Please Matt, I’m gonna die. I can already feel the heat now. I’m sorry for all the other times. But this time it’s true!’
‘Then tell me what’s up.’
Single rays had began to break through the clouds. Matt could smell the morning dew. Ethan started to scream.
‘Let me go! Let me go!’
Matt had been proud of his whole set-up. This was supposed to teach the boy who cried wolf (one too many times) the value of telling the truth. Or something close to it.
But when smoke started to appear from Ethan’s head and his screaming didn’t stop, Matt dropped his coffee. What followed, you should understand, took place within 20 seconds, 25 seconds tops. He had no time to get help or even find an extinguisher. Matt couldn’t really be blamed for inaction from this point onwards. It was totally beyond his control.
More smoke had appeared. Matt made a run for him. By this time he could already smell the burning of flesh. Ethan’s hand was the first part to catch fire. Then his left shoulder. Other parts followed. Matt tried to untie the ropes but by this time, the rope was also on fire and was too hot to handle. Ethan was wriggling violently in his chair. His screaming had turned to a screech. Matt, frantic, decided to kick over the chair. The heat was too much for Matt to even get close. As Ethan hit the concrete, there was a moment. Of near silence. Then he exploded. Not so much like a bomb. More like a dropped egg. A water bomb perhaps. The fire is out. There was just hot air. And Matt is covered in dust. Dust that used to be his best friend.
All this happened in about 20 seconds. 25 seconds tops.
On concrete, on the top of a 23-storey building, is this chair. A smoking skeleton is tied to this chair with still burning ropes. And next to this is a young man sitting against a wall with his eyes wide open, refusing to blink. He has no idea what to think right now. The sun is up. Down below, on the street, a 54-year-old female jogger gets a piece of dust in her left eye and blames globalisation for all the pollution in the air.
002 Appetite
Sally tells everyone that she’s a nurse. Even to the point of having it artificially inserted into conversations. Say if someone were to ask her if she has a dog, she might reply, ‘I love all sorts of creatures. Being a nurse, you’d have to. But no, I don’t have a dog.’
The thing is, she isn’t really a nurse. But she does work in a hospital. She’s actually one of those lab people that handle blood samples and clean petri dishes. But she’s planned on studying to become a nurse so that one day she can tell people that she’s a nurse and it would actually be true.
It was last night that a guy – Jack or John or someone – bought her a drink. Or two. Or a few. She can’t remember. She had told him that she’s a nurse. He seemed rather impressed by that. By the end of the night, she had given him her number. Maybe he’ll call her. Maybe he won’t. But it won’t really matter either way.
She doesn’t plan to be alive by the end of tonight. She doesn’t plan on ever becoming a nurse anymore.
Sally clocks off work at 4:30 pm today. She goes home to her apartment and turns on the TV. After a shower, she goes to her desk and writes a note.
Dear mum and dad
Please look after the cat for me.
Love
Sally.
The cat looks at Sally while she is folding the note. The cat doesn’t understand. Sally gets dressed after that. She puts on a bright blue singlet and a pair of jeans. In the mirror, she stretches her jeans as if to check how it would hold up should she get six months pregnant somewhere during the night. Before she leaves, she waters the plants on the window sill of the kitchen. Then she puts on a brown leather jacket, says ‘meow’ to the cat and leaves. It is 6:05 pm.
By the time she gets to the city, it’s 6:47 pm and by 6:50 pm, she is eating a Big Mac meal. She has sweet and sour sauce for the fries. She eats the fries first. Always does. She figures that a cold burger always tastes better than cold fries. A lot of people would agree with her.
She had asked the 16 year-old boy at the counter what makes the special sauce so special. He looked at her for a few seconds, confused, then said, ‘I think it’s the pickles.’
At 7:24 pm she is going through a KFC Variety Bucket, silently complaining that there isn’t enough variety. She eats all the Crispy strips and the Hot and Spicy pieces. A woman on the next table says ‘You must be hungry.’ Sally dangles an Original recipe piece in front of her face and says ‘Yeah. You want some?’
At Oportos she asks the girl at the counter ‘You know how you can have one, two or three pieces of chicken on your burger, well can you make me one with six?’
The girl, looking puzzled but satisfied that Sally isn’t joking about the request, says ‘I’ll go ask the manager.’
‘If you can’t do me that, I’ll settle for two of the large Bondis. But only one chips’
The time is now 8:14 pm and Sally is starting to feel sick.
After a Long stack of pancakes at 9:45, Sally is no longer really there. The next three hours are a blur.
A Whopper and a Bacon double cheese at 10. Two K’babys sometime after. Then something something something. Whatever.
She has a wait before the pizza gets delivered to her bench by the harbour at 12:58 am. By then she looks like Death but the pizza boy doesn’t ask any questions. There is so much to eat. She’s full – past full. But she wants more. She’s looking past satisfaction, past satiety. There are theoretical points where pleasure turns to pain and then pain becomes an overwhelming numbness. And then you become nothing. When you take in everything, you become nothing.
There’s a young man sitting on the next benching watching Sally. By now it’s painful even to watch. Sally begins to cry.
‘I’m eating my way to Nirvana,’ she says to the young man.
‘But gluttony will get you to Hell,’ he replies.
She begins to smile. She didn’t consider that. Her smile turns to a snigger. A small breath is released into the air. That opens the floodgates.
First it’s a solid chunk. It may be the shawrma. Or a piece of all-Australian all-beef pattie. Then more solid chunks. The smaller bits. Then liquid follows. Warm, yellowy, acidic. Sally can taste and smell everything that rushes out of her mouth. It falls to the ground, splashing all over her. The rest of the world has disappeared. She is an open sewer pipe. She is Linda Blair exorcising herself. Sally feels her stomach collapsing on itself. Then her head starts spinning. Vision blurs. She’s out.
When her eyes open next, she is lying on the grass. Sally feels cold and wet. The young man is standing over her, looking down on her.
‘Am I dead?’
‘It doesn’t look like it. I called the ambulance. They’ll be here in 10 minutes. But they told me that 15 minutes ago.’
Sally tries to get up, but can’t.
‘Just stay down til they get here.’
‘I have to go home and feed my cat,’ she says, crying again.
‘I don’t think you’re in any shape to. Oh, and some guy named Jack called you on your mobile. I told him that now is probably a bad time.’
‘Yeah,’ says Sally, ‘now probably isn’t such a good time.’
Sirens ring. A flock of birds flutters above her head. Sally wonders if there is any pizza left but she knows better than to ask.
001 Jack smiles
'One double gin and tonic and something else... whatever he wants.'
Mike points to Jack. Jack says 'Scotch and dry' and the bartender nods and starts spinning bottles unnecessarily. Next to the bartender is a barmaid (if that is the correct term these days) doing something similar. Jack is transfixed on her.
‘Oi! Are you coming?’
Mike has the two drinks already in his hands and motions for Jack to join him.
It is dark in the bar. The music is loud but no one is dancing. It’s chill out music. Jack hates chill out music. They’ve come here to talk but it’s a struggle. Mike sips on his drink and scans the room, nodding randomly, slightly out of beat to the music. Jack begins to cough. The air is so thick that smells have become irrelevant. The body adjusts to breathing in alcohol fumes, the collective after-dinner breaths of a thousand people and passive smoke that has been passive for days and days. It is 1 am now and all the decent patronage have either gone home or moved to a better bar.
‘So Lauren rejected you, Jack. You’ll bounce back.’
Jack tries to ignore the inadvertent rhyming couplet that just came out of Mike’s mouth.
‘She didn’t reject me.’
‘So what happened then?’
‘Have you seen that show “Miriam”?’
‘Oh, is that the one…’
‘She’s a man.’
‘What?’
‘Lauren’s a man!’
Jack becomes suddenly self-conscious, half expecting the DJ to stop the music or the power to unexpectedly cut off – anything to produce enough silence for all to hear the announcement he’s just made. But there is nothing. The mind-numbing chill out noise continues on and no one other than Mike even flinches.
‘How do you know?’
‘She told me.’
‘And you believe her?’
‘She told me to feel her if I didn’t believe her.’
‘Feel what? …Oh, you mean down there?’
Jack nods.
‘So did you?’
‘No!’
‘Well maybe she’s lying. You should go back to her. Maybe it was some kind of test or something.’
‘No way! I don’t wanna feel down there if it’s a guy! And besides, you don’t get it. I’ve been having these… these fantasies about her and, well, in them she’s a girl, you know? She’s all… girl. But now I have this image in my head of Lauren and she’s got a … urggh… I don’t wanna think about this anymore.’
Jack won’t say any more on the topic so Mike gets up to buy another round. When he comes back…
‘I know you liked her…er… him a lot,’ says Mike as he comes back to Jack. ‘But I think the best thing for you now…’
‘… is to fall in love. I’m going to ask out the first girl that walks into this bar.’
Jack eyes the door intently. Mike looks at him with subtle disapproval, then slowly turns around to wait with him.
‘You know this has been done lots of times before in movies and stuff.’
‘Shhh!’
As if on cue, a young woman walks in by herself. She is tall and skinny, looking somewhat dishevelled, yet somewhat alluring.
‘OK, maybe the second girl’ says Jack from the bottom of his glass.
‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘She’s not a nurse.’
‘What?’
‘I want a nurse. And she doesn’t look like one.’
‘Since when did you want a nurse?’
‘Since always. When we were 8, I told you I wanted to marry a nurse.’
‘No. When you were 8, you wanted to be a nurse.’
‘No I didn’t! … did I?’
Another woman walks into the bar. She looks to be about 40. All other information about her is irrelevant to this story.
‘She’s not technically a “girl”’, Jack points out correctly.
‘So talk to the first one then.’
‘Um… nah.’
‘What do you mean? You said you were going to.’
‘I just don’t feel like it.’
‘OK, here…’
Mike hands Jack a $20 note.
‘Buy her a drink.’
‘Don’t give me money! Fine! Fine! I’ll go talk to her.’
Mike smiles contently and sips on his drink. Jack walks over to the girl. His heart is beating fast. In his mind he is thinking ‘Please let her not be a man.’
‘Hi’ says Jack.
Please let her not be a man.
‘Hi’
Please let her not be a man.
From up close, she looks prettier. She has a funny-looking nose. But then, so does Sarah Michelle Gellar. And she doesn’t seem to have an Adam’s apple.
Jack stands in front of her with a dopey grin on his face. She is turned to face him, waiting for him to say something. But he doesn’t. There’s only so long you can wait.
‘Actually,’ she says, ‘I’m waiting for a couple of workmates. They’re just coming up from the hospital now.’
‘Oh,’ says Jack. Disappointed. ‘OK then.’
He turns around to leave her but Mike shoots an angry glare at him. Jack turns back his head towards the girl.
‘Did you say hospital?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are they OK? Your friends, I mean.’
‘Oh yes. We just work there. I’m a nurse.’
Jack smiles.
