Snake Kennedy

The Cat The Chair and The Guido.

2011-12-01T18:41:00.000-08:00

THUD

I thought he was Adonis. But that was before he turned me into a Chair. now I see him more as a Mama's boy with a flat screen tv that he never turns off. Since I've lived in his house I've turned wooden, lost my stink and and my heartbeat. I'm not even human. I'm a Chair! And now I am a chair I can see he's no Adonis! The truth is he's more of a Guido. Smooth and sorta stupid. All his girl friends sound like Effie from Wogs outta Work. One of them laughed at my name, not knowing the walls are made of paper and I could hear her. I can hear everything.

SWEETHEART.

He stands outside my bedroom door and calls to the cat every morning.

SWEETHEART.

He yells like he's living in a double brick mansion. As if anyone has to yell to be heard in this box? We can hear each other fart and sigh with a hallway and bathroom between us

SWEET HEART.

He calls me Sweetheart too so it wakes me! Then the sound of breakfast television filters into my ears. What's the point of surround sound if you don't use it? What's the point of a flat screen tv if it's not on night and day?

I measure his moods through the remote control. So does the cat. When he turns up the tv she jumps from his lap and starts pacing. I grit my teeth, close the paper doors and creep off back to my cat perch. The cat perch is comfy. I feel like I'm safe here. I was restless for a week trying to find a corner to settle into. In lieu of a room to call your own there's nothing like a perch. The cat wants it back but bad luck. She's not getting it. This perch is all I've got. It does me nicely. My needs are simple. A desk, a chair. A power point. I lived without those needs for almost a week until I found this spot. And now the cat hates me.

THUD.

But not as much as she hates him. At least she doesn't piss on my bed. Good on her! I would piss on his bed too if all I got for dinner was dry food and water. Just because she's damaged doesn't mean that she doesn't have fine tastes. Sweetheart and I have a lot in common. He rescued her from a shelter. And he spared me from having to live in one while I find accommodation. I'm on the run from Perth. She's on the run from Adelaide..

THUMP.

No doubt he loved her too in the beginning. I'm sure there was wet food and treats to begin with. The first night I moved in he cooked me mashed potato with sausages. Mashed potato is my ultimate comfort food. We drank wine and flirted. I was high on his cooking, his smell, his good looks and all the Adonis attention. I had left a beer soaked mine in Perth to come to to civilised Adelaide. What a city! What a dream land. What a hunk of a man. He made me dizzy.

And then when I put down my fork he said 'You know when Leo told me that you were a Reporter for Simon Townsend's WonderWorld and all the things you do I thought I'd be sexually attracted to you. But I realised when I met you tonight that I don't find you attractive at all'. And he started clearing the plates. That was it. Conversation over.

What a weirdo?

And from that moment on and every day I've since spent here, I slowly turned from a hot blooded woman into a chair. Yes a chair. An odd type of objectification. At least when you're sexually objectified you're still human. But a chair is just a piece of wood. It has no sex. It has no feelings. You don't ask a chair if you are going to move it. You just move it. You don't have to turn the tv down for a chair because a chair has no ears. You can ignore a chair. You can shift it to one side without apologising. You don't ask a chair how they're feeling? A chair is there for your arse to have somewhere to sit. Nothing more. Nothing less. If I sat down on his couch and a re-run of 'friends' came on the tele he would sit on my head until he heard my muffled screams and then he'd say...

'Oh sorry Sweetheart. Didn't see you!'

It's not a very dignified position to be in. So I hung out in the courtyard like an odd piece of furniture and paired up with the Cat Perch. It's the only spot that Adonis won't wipe down and sanitise my stink. There's no point wiping down chip board. It reflects nothing and leaves splinters in your cloth. So I am safe here. Around Adonis I feel feral and swampy. Like I leave a snail trail. In his house I am always re-tracing my steps with cloth and a bottle of Windex. You'd think I had the arms of Medusa I leave so many finger prints. That's why I like the Cat Perch. You can't scratch it or stain it. Well you can but the cat doesn't care. She just wants me off it because the smooth surfaces are driving her crazy too. There's barely room for one cat in this house. Let alone two. She has no space at all now. But I'm not taking responsibility for all her issues. That cat needs a shrink.

Since Adonis is training to be one so you'd think they'd be the perfect couple. But Adonis doesn't have a zit of empathy. He doesn't have a zit either. Or a wrinkle. He's Adonis. He's beautiful. Just don't scratch the surface or leave any crumbs on the bench in the kitchen. He likes his surfaces. empty, smooth and glassy so he can see himself in them. Cats, on the other hand, subscribe to the Quentin Crisp version of Happiness which 'consists of living in the continuous present all over your body for as long as possible.' Cats understand this instinctively. Cats need to rub up against things that rub them back and to climb and to play hide and seek and feel shrubs rub up against their faces.

But in this box there's nothing to play with. The small courtyard we share is closed in by a clear corrugated awning and hot tin walls. A table sits in the middle. The table is clean and bare and smooth like everything else. When the sun hits the table in the morning you can look down and see the shadow of your face in it. Through the awning the heat burns a hole the back of your head.

The cat has only polished floorboards, hot stone and concrete to rub herself up against. So she rolls around in the litter box and gets gravel and shit in her fur. I try to comb it out with my fingers. She's stopped caring for herself. I can relate to this. Since living with Adonis I've stopped looking in the mirror. I'm a chair. Who cares what I look like? Adonis absorbs everything around him. Including me.

The Cat meowls at the top of the hot tin fence. She wants to climb that fence but it's smooth and shiny and she's been de-clawed. She's double thwarted. Every time she makes a leap for the fence she lands with a THUMP on the concrete. Then she picks herself up and tries it again. Wild vines peep over the top of the fence from the neighbors. It looks cool and luscious. The vines reach like fingers to beckon her. She looks up in despair trying to gage the jump. The white cat next door can manage to do it. But that cat has confidence, strong legs and sharp claws. That cat leaps over the hot tin fence at least three times a day. Her mobility mocks us.

I have nowhere to go yet. And Sweetheart has no claws. Just two soft pads like a cartoon cat. They slide down the shiny surface of the fence. She falls to the ground with a thump. Picks herself up, flings herself at the fence again and again. Thump Thump. THUMP. It's unbearable. I want to fling her over the fence just to have it over with. I can't stand it. But it's not like I have any say. I'm just a chair. It's not like I'm PETA. And Adonis is watching...

'Sweetheart what are you doing? '

Does he really expect her to answer him. It's obvious what she's doing. What's he doing? He doesn't pick her up. He doesn't stop her. He doesn't lift a finger to try to help her or comfort her. Because it's all about him. Her need to escape is bringing up all his 'abandonment' issues. He sits there docile as a soft toy.

'She hates me.'

'Maybe she's just depressed?' I offer.

'Sweetheart?'. his voice goes up like a question mark.

She ignores him and throws herself at the fence again.

'She hates me. She really hates me'

The cat falls to the floor like a sack of potatoes and wipes herself across the concrete getting ready for another suicidal leap.

'Look. She wants to get away from me She hates me'

'No she doesn't. She doesn't hate you!'

THUD.

But what do I know? I'm just a Chair.

Feral cat in a cage j hammer oil on canvas sold 150 x 120cm by Jonny Hammer.

BORING. SO BOOOORING!

2011-11-24T22:23:00.000-08:00

I was walking up the main drag of Freemantle trying to sniff out a vibe. He was lounging like a pirate on his plank hurling furious words and booing at strangers who scurried past afraid of him.

SOOOOO BOOOOOOORING.

People run from a mouth with this sort of velocity but to me it was glorious. Part cyclone, part volano with a halo of red dust kicked up each time he opened it. He had a hat with a feather, missing teeth and a majestic profile that he wouldn't let me video. He carried a golf bag with a pirate flag stuck in the top of it. He had a small tin with a bud in it and a pouch of tobacco and a slim gold pipe that looked brand new. He was totally stylin and his mouth was a machine gun.

IT'S SO BORING this town! IT'S SOOOOOOOOO BORING'

You'd just think he was just an angry drunk if you weren't listening. You'd think he was Sick. Demented. Deranged. But if you listened properly it would make you weep with its eloquence. I hate small talk. He went straight to the heart of the wound. No mucking around.

All he wants to do is go Walkabout but the streets of Perth are a prison. The cops follow him everywhere, moniter his every movement. Pounce if they have a bad mood swing. Go through his golf bag, grab his pipe, confiscate his tin. Put him in the paddy wagon. If they're slow on their Arrest Quota for the week, they might just arrest him for breathing.

DOGS. PIGS. BASTARDS!

He tells me how the female coppers speak to him. Reminds me of that iconic photo of the US female soldier dragging that man around on a leash. I tell him he should write a book. I"ll help him. He's a natural story teller. He could be a You Tube supastar! Maybe you'll win a Deadly? But he's not the slightest bit interested. Nothing can entice him. No bait, no hook, no promise. The black fellas too have betrayed him.

MANIPULATORS!!! LIARS. THIEVES.

He tells me he's got no story. No story that he hasn't told a million times before. He tells me to get his story from the cops. They've taken notes. They've got a file on him as fat as a bible. They've been writing it all down for years. They know everything he does including how many times a day he wipes his bum'. And then he turns back to the street. And screams

ARSEWIPES !

I want to applaud. I want to yell out 'Encore Encore!' His rage is magnificant truth and anyone with half a heart can see it. I scan the streets for half a heart. I count two fat thighs, a bum in shorts too tight, a bald white head. El Sicko's right it's boring.

'BUT IT'S NOT JUST ME. YOU'RE ALL TAGGED NOW'.

Yes. He's right. We're all tagged now Maybe we always were I just never noticed? But there are very few parts of Australia I've gone walkabout where I haven't felt under surveillance. I don't feel protected. Just watched. It is as though my vulnerability somehow makes me dangerous. They keep telling me to settle and then pointing to a hole in the ground. It's not very inviting. But it's all I deserve for not playing the game as they know it. My Walkabout all over the world has turned me into an outcast. This happened long ago but now my condition is chronic. And there's no point settling until I find a hole roomy enough to grow something in. That hole that we call home. That home where the heart is... 'Two fat thighs. A bum in shorts too tight, a pig in a bow tie, a bald white head...'

I sit with El Sicko and we watch the passers by. I know what they're thinking. They think it. He speaks it. El Sicko for PM. If he was in charge we could bring all these citizen ghosts back to life and banish the spooks driving paddy wagons. El Sicko looks around in disgust and yells..

'Asslickers and Shit Kickers end up as Arse wipe'.

and then he looks at me and I yell

'Carbon Tax!'

It's like a relay. I'm having fun. And then he packs a pipe and hands it to me Right there! Under street lights on the main drag of Freemantle in the week leading up to CHOGM. It was Outrageous. The man was a mind reader. And If he wasn't Aboriginal I would have run for my life! But somehow I knew they couldn't touch him. They can arrest and strip search, detain him, take notes and thwart his mobility. But they'll never own his howling soul. He has a protection that none of us have. It comes with the spirit of the land. And on some level they know it. I know it. We know it. Our chains rattle and slide around our feet as we watch the spooks surround a drunk on the other side of the road.

SHEEP BORES IDIOTS!

Then a three year old boy and his mother appear out of nowhere. The boy looks up at El Sicko tranfixed and in love. His mother tries to move him on but the child won't be shifted and can't stop smiling at the magic man with the feather in his hat. The kid is mesmorised. El Sicko smiles back. All his rage has evaporated. Now the scene screams Walt Disney. All we need is a happy ending and some fairy dust...

Hello little fella. What's your name?

El Sicko's voice is warm and gentle. He plucks the Pirate flag from the top of his golf bag and hands it to the awe struck child. Making the moment complete. The ghosts have gone silent now. They've been vanquished by a peace pipe and a pirate flag. We're all in love. The little boy, the mother, El Sicko and me. I go across the bottle shop to buy El Sicko Scotch and coke in a can. Black label. When I say Goodbye El Sicko gives me two small stones for protection.

God bless you Sister.

Stoned and blessed. In Perth that's no small feat.

Oh Dear

2011-11-20T19:03:00.000-08:00

When I arrived in Maylands. The Miner was suicidal. I wish he had've told me that before I left Sydney. I had no idea I was coming to a sick and suicidal miner who hated Perth and never left the house. That's not the picture he presented. I should have known better. But the bait was too tempting. He would be gone three weeks out of four. I would use that time to write with no stress and no pressure. I would live there for three months and finish my book.

But instead of leaving for the mines he set up a mine in the lounge room. Where he drinks beer from breakfast to bedtime with regular toilet breaks. Between the flushing and the hacking and the sipping he sits very still but we're not talking 'still life'. He looks more like Picasso pickled in formaldehyde. The curtains are closed because it's Perth and we don't want to see the neighbors. They might ask us for a cup of Sugar or something? They might say hello! Quell Horreur CALL THE POLICE!!! He has already alienated the closest neighbor when he stomped over to tell him to TURN DOWN HIS FUCKING MUSIC!! So now that guy is an enemy. Which is a bummer for me because apparently he's also a pot dealer! If they were still friends I would skip across the driveway for a little smoke, instead all I can do is sit at the window and inhale longingly!

Bloody Hell. I was supposed to be writing the Great Australian Road Movie and He was supposed to be down in the mines slaving away for his future. But he hated the mines. The Silicon irritated this throat and his eyes. He felt 157. The mines were a blood sucking killer. They took his photo every ten minutes, drink and drug tests every morning. He didn't care about the future. He wished he was still earning seventeen dollars an hour in FNQ. At least he had friends there! At least he had tropical weather. In Perth he wanted to die and he couldn't stop drinking. Can you die from beer?

Oh dear.

So I went into Florence Nightingale mode. Put lavender out. Burned Oils. Made a few homely touches. Gave him pep talks like a life coach. Fed him. It was bloody exhausting if the truth be known and the higher I bounced the shittier he got. It was a totally thankless task. He loved his pain and he hated me interfering with it. And really I just wanted him to get down in that bloody mine again. I did not come to live with a moody suicidal alcoholic who anticipated my every move through fuzzy vision. I just wanted to fit him out in a gas mask and shove him out the door.

I would have felt less resentful if the Miner had've listened to my stories. But he was not one scrap interested in either my show or my books. He was only interested in telling me his sorry tales over and over and Over. But only after making me promise that I'd never repeat them. He said his life depended on it. Which didn't seem to be much of a threat when you considered he was already tossing up suicide. And I suspect it's all bollocks so what difference will it make?

So here's the story. Apparently the Miner is descended from Croatian Royalty. His Grand dad was a Duke murdered after the second world war, family name shot to pieces. legacy stuffed in the rubbish. You know that old narrative ? Well I don't actually ? I'm not terribly brushed up on Croatian Aristocracy but I doubt that much history could be lost in just two generations. They say Australia is the land of forgetting but this is ridiculous! Was he trying to impress me?

What would impress me. What would really show his royal lineage would be if he funded my next show. Let the Great Grand Son of the Duke be my Medici! From what I can gather his idea of patronage is a slab of Carlton Draught and a box of KFC. When he lifts his hand to his face he's not gearing up for a royal wave. He's just taking a sip of his beer before lighting a ciggie. I am suspicious. You'd think fallen Aristocracy would have a decent library but there's not a book in the house, not even a newspaper. He tells me that he knows how to waltz and ballroom dance but I've only ever seen him stagger in and out of the fridge and the bathroom so I can barely imagine him doing the fox trot. If he tried to curtsy he'd fall down and bruise his shiny head. I only respect Aristocracy if they come bearing champagne and fat cheques! And they don't seem to come bearing anything in Perth. Empty desolate city on the edge of the universe.

Knock Knock.

Whose there?

Nobody.

Nobody who?

Nobody Cares. We don't give a fuck if you're here or you're not. What do you want for nothin?

Nothing?

Welcome to Perth.

Oh dear....

So last week I was in Perth and This week I am in Adelaide.

2011-11-17T22:50:00.000-08:00

It started like this....

'Oh my Gawd. The miner pretended to leave for the mine. Put his shoes and his bag in his bedroom. I just opened the door and he's still in there. He's been laying silent as a snake listening to my phone calls. I'm scared now. I gotta get outta here!'

It was my facebook friends who rallied around me. I put out my SOS and they all came to the party with names, songs, advise and telephone numbers. 147 comments later I was sorted. I get by with a little help from my friends. But it was my real life friends who got me out of Perth and into Adelaide. Lovely Lina loaned me a plane fare and Lafferty gave me cab fare to get me to the airport and back and Lenny lined me up accommodation with Adonis.

That was very generous of Lenny. Very VERY Generous. To welcome me to Adelaide with a nice warm wholesome handsome God of a man! Mama Mia!! I nearly died when he opened the door.

He didn't even have to open his mouth. He had Love God written all over him. He moved like a ballet dancer crossed with a basketball player. He sorta bobs up an down a bit when he starts to get passionate about a subject. You know those Italian men...trying to keep it all down in a town full of Anglos. All that energy bounces around under his skin like a bag full of puppies. His Mama loves him. How could she not? How could any woman not love him. He teaches Salsa. A man who can teach Salsa has the world as his Oyster. Oyster being the operative word. He doesn't need to speak. He just needs to stand there. He could bark and we'd all applaud. He has gifts that can never be taught But the Anglos have got to him.

Bastards!

Somehow they have convinced him that to be the God he naturally is that he has to become a clinical Psychologist. So he's followed their lead and now taken to their books. I can see testosterone being leeched onto the page as he writes. I want to bleed all over his notes. Blot out all that nonsense he's filling his head with. It's a terrible urge because I've only just arrived and Lenny's already told him I was crazy. Naughty Lenny. I smacked him for that!

But Lenny didn't really mean crazy he meant DANGEROUS. He meant 'Don't tell her anything. She'll write down everything you say and spin it into a story. She'll steal your best lines, shine them up and pop them back into your mouth with another name and in another situation.'

I suppose they are friends so fair warning. And my readers are just dying for a love story. They've read tragedy enough. Bring on Adonis. Who is not one bit interested in me! He made that perfectly clear on the first night. He is grieving a lost lover. 'Oh let me wipe your tears Adonis!!' I don't smell any grief on him and grief is my specialty. He smells like hot widow to me! Plato said that Love is a type of madness but I think he was just talking about Sex.

I've never been so horny in my life and I don't know what it is? Maybe it's the desert heat? Maybe it's Adelaide? Maybe it's Adonis? I'm just the right amount of vibed up and weighed down at the same time. Once or twice I've lost my balance but generally my situation has 100% improved. All I need is Adonis to hammer it home and we'll have a happy ending.

Shhhh....don't tell him I said that.

I'm keeping it quiet. I'm being a very good house guest. I'm trying to be supportive of his Psychology Course. He also has a day job and he keeps a clean house. He is very responsable. I'm not paying rent it's the least I can do! But it's no small order. To watch him bury himself in those books, like a monk, is a torture! All that 'psychology' is dry cleaning him daily. He'll look like a loofah by the time he's finished that course. You could scrub your back with him. Psychology is just exfoliation. It's about as cathartic as a tupperwear party. He is the Therapy. He just doesn't know it! If you bottled his sweat you could sell it as rescue remedy! The medicine is being secreted from under his arm pits. It's divine. 100% organic. Wholesome. handsome. Balls in tact. Mother Nature's finest offering...

Sigh.

He called me 'dude' so I didn't get any ideas and I asked him not to call me that so he called me 'Mate' and I didn't like that either so now he calls me 'sweetheart'. It doesn't mean anything when he calls me 'Sweetheart' but it's all that he's left with now I've verbally cornered him. Poor darling! By the time he's finished that Psychology course he'll be calling me 'Sweetie' and the tone will be patronising. I'm enjoying 'sweetheart' while it still gurgles up from his belly. I love it! (You Tarzan. Me Jane!:) You can hear his heart beating from under his chest. He has a conscience. Psychology will teach him that his guilt is a bad thing.

Mama knows better.

He throws his arm over the side of his chair leans back and smiles and says 'Hi Sweetheart' in a wog aussie accent that ends with a question mark? 'Oh Let me throw panties! Adorable!' And they will get rid of that. They will strip him of his accent and his balls and his stink and leave him with their buttoned up manhood. It's a tragedy! We don't need a man like this to start thinking too much. Psychology!! He might as well have joined the Scientologists. They are going to corrupt him with their head fuckery. It's criminal. I want to rescue him from this sanity insanity. They are going to strip the italian stallion right outta him. He's like a statue that's breathing. I am in the presence of a man on the edge of extinction.

Adelaide I love you!

I weep.

If you

2010-07-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

Winter Again Sarah Noxx

2010-07-10T21:14:00.000-07:00

Goodbye Brisbane.

2010-03-15T21:51:00.000-07:00

I was going to spend my last night in Brisbane at a Performance Event. But then I got a last minute phone call from Franky. He’d left his controlling girlfriend, booked himself into rehab and found out he had cirrhosis of the liver.

So of course I had to go seem him. Franky was my main man. He booked me my ticket on the White Trash Express. He was the one who sold me the Crisis Centre, (cheap as chips,gorgeous grounds, lovely old Queenslander) and talked it up like a five star resort. He has a heart of gold and I love him to bits but If I started out on the wrong foot I owed it all to Franky.

Besides I had to finish Brisbane the way I started it. There was no point going for a happy ending in a tale with no redemption. Brisbane and I had a narrative going on that involved Crisis Centres, Rehabs , Boarding House bitches and conversations with bashed women, stand over men and people that live in Caravan Parks. It’s everything I ever imagined when I actually think about it?

It’s like way back (about ten months ago) when I was an arrogant up myself Sydney sider, I'd always imagined Brisbane as this back wards, scar neck, redneck, narrow minded lynchville, white trash, back water sort of city and that’s the Brisbane I’d discovered.

Creative Visualisation right?

It seemed every time I left the house I ran into some one who’d just got out of jail or who was visiting someone in jail, or who had been bashed or stolen from by someone who should have been locked up. Only that morning I had met this woman who was sitting outside Coles nursing a swollen purple foot that she’d won in a car accident. She had been sitting there all morning and would possibly sit there all night, because a group of homeless guys had stolen her wheelchair to hock at Cash Converters.

Nice.

I would have helped her but I was scared those homeless guys would come back to grab my shopping. I’ve become a sort of magnet to people who have hit hard luck or hard luck has hit them or they’ve been shacked up with hard luck for so long that it doesn’t even feel like hard luck anymore. It just feels like life.

Not that I should talk because my luck has been surfing the toilet bowl ever since I crawled off a Greyhound bus and into that overpriced capsule hotel in Fortitude Valley. From there I flew down hill to a Crisis Centre and fled right back out of there as soon as I’d worked out it was only a cut above a Detention Centre to find myself a nice boarding house with dirty toilets. An errant complaint to the landlady had me packing my bags again and moving straight into a boarding house with bed bugs. After a bit of lateral thinking I found myself a few days reprieve with a nice middle class boy who wanted a hand job. Only to move in with a dead man in Paradise. Brisbane’s just another name for Heaven! What a lovely welcoming place !

But I have to admit my hard luck had become most confronting. Most people have to have had a serious drug addiction to be in my position. Whereas I’ve just had this on going delusion that ANY DAY NOW my talents are all going to pay off and I’m going to be a rip roaring fucking success. I might as well have spent the past twenty odd years on crack cocaine. Because at the end of the road there’s not much difference…

It was like my flatmate saying to me ‘I don’t care about your books. I don’t care about your Stories’. He was the messenger sent to tell me that my Gig Was Up! They’re the sort of messengers sent to delusional Australians. Tax Payers in serviceable state issued uniforms handing out Zoloft and threatening to quarantine your pension cheque.

That’s the difference between Brisbane and a Hollywood movie. Hollywood calls them Dreamers and Brisbane calls them Delusionals. In Hollywood movies the messenger arrives just before the closing credits to reward you for sustaining your delusion against all odds. He hands over a big fat cheque, gives you a story in the paper and the deeds to a happy ending. (see Crazy Heart)

So I cycled over to see Frankie and we wailed over a bottle of Greyhound water that I’d got free with my Sydney ticket. I told him not to worry, that livers know how to regenerate. He just had to just take up yoga and the rot would start to reverse. We had a hug, wished each other good luck, then I cycled back to West End for a liver punch with Kazza.

Kaz is a tranny. But I’m not sure which equipment she was born with? She looks like a bloke who has changed into a woman but she tells me that she was born as a female lesbian, who started to take testosterone to attract the straight girls and then stopped when the attraction didn’t work. Now she’s stuck in this no man’s land between Tuck Shop lady and Truck Driver and nobody knows what to call her? But if you get it wrong, she’ll threaten to punch all your lights out.

So she’s a little complicated, but that’s the woman in her and I’m quite happy to see her the way that she sees herself. The only problem is that I bring out her Lesbian tendencies. So she started getting jealous when I struck up a conversation with the Acid freak.

The Acid freak just sat down at our table and started telling us how he was at the crossroads of his life. He’d lived in Byron Bay for 23 years where he’d taken a daily cocktail of mind altering drugs. His brain had been frying for as long as he could remember. But after Monday he was killing the sizzle for good. He was booking himself into rehab. And he was terrified! From then on everything he liked about himself would be over. No more visions, visitations, astral travel and epiphanies. He would never be able to share another mind altering idea, conversations would be cold cuts served to idiots.

I found his raw confession totally fascinating but Kazza didn’t like him at all. Mostly because he was taking up all my attention. So she snuck off to the bar when we weren’t looking and reported him for being drunk and disorderly.

He may have been a little drunk but he wasn’t actually disorderly. In fact I found him succinct and very articulate. I could completely relate to the appalling idea of being stone cold sober in Brisbane. And to show my support I bought him a pint of Guinness.

But then the management came and took it off him and kicked him out of the pub for being drunk while drinking. This sort of turned me into an accomplice which was quite unexpected. So I exited stage left with Kaz glowering at the rear of me.

She exploded when we got outside.

‘Do you like trouble? Why do you talk to these losers?

‘For the same reason I talk to you.’

I didn’t say that.

But it’s true.

The only reason I started talking to her was because nobody else was talking to her. It seemed a little rude to point this out but I was getting pretty tired of finger pointing Briz Vegans. I do not like to be judged by people I once made fun of and I’m sick of trying to explain myself.

The fact is it’s not actually trouble I’m seeking! It’s a heart that’s still beating! And at least losers at the crossroads have a pulse! I came on a journey looking for the heart of Australia. But I’ve come to the end of my journey and all I have in my hands is Franky's rotting liver. And I’m trying to work out what it's trying to tell me?

It seems to me the deader and more conservative things become on the inside. The darker and more dangerous the outside becomes. The inside is 69 Paradise Street. And my flatmate stands for everything it represents. Parochial, narrow minded, boring, highly judgemental, non empathetic and oblivious to the world outside his window. And on one level it’s hard to blame him.

Because just down the road from Paradise Street, drowned out by a cacophony of garden tools are the people who will smash in your lights and knock off your wheelchair. You sort of get why the middle class have retreated.

But how can I say all this to Kaz. She doesn’t even have the choice of being on the inside. Her permanent abode is a Crisis Hostel. She has two broken front teeth from where she was living in a caravan park and this woman hit her in the face with a cricket bat.

So I tell her another truth. I tell her that I prefer people who wear their badness on the outside it because the most evil man I’d ever met looked totally benign.

Then Kaz confessed that she knew what I meant because she once had a six year relationship with a Serial Killer. At night he was a lovely nurturing husbandly type, but during the day he was murdering Granny’s underneath the guise of as a television repair man. He would get into their houses to put in an aerial and come back later to murder them. For six peaceful years she thought he was a sweetheart until his mug shot turned up on the six o’clock news. Then she left him.

And with that final Bedtime story I said Goodnight.