11th March, 2012
Alcoholism & Depravity
(Eleven Days without Mushrooms)
Alcoholism & Depravity
(Eleven Days without Mushrooms)
I wake up at four o’clock in the afternoon with an empty head. Like someone’s taken a drill to me KGB style. My lobotomy, it’s left me with half of my original intelligence. I dress like a respectable citizen, whatever that means, and go to work. Have to turn the taxi around because I forget to wear long sleeves to cover fresh tracks. When I get to work the people around me, my co-workers, are oblivious. They’re trying to impress each other by detailing the volume of alcohol they’ve consumed over the weekend. I am the conservative one, the boring one; I remain silent.
There is no competition between them and me. I win, by default, every time. They are the sort of people who act like junkies without ever touching a needle; the sort of people who pretend to be something they are not. Their tattoos and their piercings are fake indicators; shrapnel and battle scars, shop-bought, fashioned in sterile environments; commercial war-paint.
These emo kids with their piercings and their tattoos; advertising shit that they aren’t a part of: I have to laugh. Like Chopper with his books and his interviews; people who declare I am the real deal. They aren’t. The fact that they are intent on advertising is proof enough for me.
12th March, 2012
Alcoholism & Depravity
(Twelve Days without Mushrooms)
Alcoholism & Depravity
(Twelve Days without Mushrooms)
My foot starting hurting after about two hours in the city. Walking this way and that. I think I sprained an ankle. The pain, now twenty four hours later, is still there. It’s rising, without the drugs. I can hardly walk. After work, I limp across campus, into the university pub. Order a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser; I drink them at the bar. I half-stumble, half-limp, back to the cashier; there’s a long line, so I go back to the pub while I’m waiting and order another whiskey and beer combo. I scam a cigarette of some androgynous looking mother fucker. He, or she, looks at me like I’m a fucking junky. I tell him, or her, that I’m sorry for being such a scourge on society and light the fucking cigarette. Sit down at a table alone; I drink slowly, killing time before returning to the cashier. I read over a short story I wrote last year. It’s fucking shit, garbage; I can do a thousand times better now that I know what I know.
Back at the cashier, there’s a shit-stirring Indian guy arguing over the counter about how much of an inconvenience reality is. It’s one of those pointless conversations people have with themselves solely for the purposes of illustration; he’s arguing so people can see how upset he is. I want to get up and intervene; I want to save this poor woman from his condemnation. But, I don’t. I sit there and think about being a hero. I fantasize about being a good guy. That’s enough for me.
On the way home, I go into the bottle-o to get some beer. I come out with a six-pack of cheap Mexican lager, a bottle of discount scotch, and a couple of other odds and ends. It’s a public holiday, so the bus is going to take at least half an hour. I limp down the street, my foot becoming worse with every step; stopping every fifty metres to take a swig of scotch. It occurs to me at some point that I drink so hard to prove to people that appearances are not always what they seem; the whole “I may look like a fucking accountant, but – I assure you – I’m a nut bag” dilemma.
I’m tired of being the go-to guy, society’s most approachable citizen, so I compensate by acting like a cunt. I piss into somebody’s letterbox, remembering that I have an unpaid fine for public urination. This is a good way to end up back in court; I know that, but I don’t give a fuck. The amount of alcohol I have to drink to forget about the pain in my leg, it makes me retarded; the pain in my leg, it’s a good excuse to kill brain cells.
When I get home, I get naked immediately. I stand out on the back porch in my birthday suit drinking scotch, yelling at the neighbours. Fucking cunts, silently judging me all the time, giving me those wish-you-lived-somewhere-else looks; I threaten to kill their children, cut off their heads and shit down their throats.