(15 Years in Long Sleeves - #2) Not Looking Too Good, But Feeling Real Well

Life was good, it was 20 years since Sergeant Pepper had taught the band to play and I'd managed to keep my shit together and stay off the smack long enough to get accepted into The Academy of Performing Arts. Suddenly I was in a tertiary institution and for the first time in my life I was thinking of my future.

I was living as care-taker in Tom Collins House before Servetus Street took steroids and swallowed the houses on the southern side of the road. The house was amazing, strewn with cabinets full of Australian first editions and furniture built by Joseph Furphy with a surreal brass rubbing by his daughter Mattie over the fire place. My duties were few: hosting the monthly meetings of the Fellowship of Australian Writers, serving cups of tea in Wembley Ware, and just being awed at my fucken arsey luck. Somehow I had landed on my size elevens yet again.

But of course there was no way that I was going to be able to keep this up for too long as there was a new drug in town. A cheap, pure powder that when hit was like riding the fucken space shuttle. But such is life for the hero of these stories, our spunky young journeyman drug addict.

(To be continued?)

The Beach

-I suppose I shouldn't have pulled out in front of him, but he was going around that roundabout a bit too fast, and now the cunt's accelerating up me arse, fuckin' cunt...

-Hey now, whoa there there buddy! I thought you were going to the beach for a walk, you know The Beach, that meeting place of sea and sand and sky; that peaceful, wonderful place.

-But I just gave him the finger!

-Shit! Well pat the dog the dog then.

-Mmmm, that Does feel better.

The beach was wonderful, and especially the track on the way back. The purple paint of Hardenbergia sprayed across the shrubs, and the single leafs of orchids laying scattered waiting to bloom.

Knock Knock

I wish I could think of a line like this when the god botherers come a knockin', but I'm usually too stoned.

Making Stuff

I just built myself a bookcase. Well, I didn't just build it, I just finished it. The project was started about a month ago and had the sacred tomes ceremoniously placed upon the altar of it's shelves earlier this week.

It's a little bit dodgy, the ply I used was a couple of busted up cover sheets salvaged from the skip at work and hence all the shelves are slightly warped. The sides are actually straight, not bowed as my cheap digital camera seems to portray.
If anyone asks me where it's from I'll probably say garage sale.
But I like it. It's good to get those books out of the boxes they have mouldered in for the last four years, and it's good knowing that I built it myself.

My next project is a coffee table. Timber salvaged from work again - it's great working at a shop that sells wood. I started preparing the top today, the dimensions are the golden mean (1.618...) so if there are any problems with my carpentry skills at least it will look aesthetically pleasing.

(15 Years in Long Sleeves #1)

Ramon was recently out of a Darwin prison farm when I moved into the house that smelled of rotting oranges in Perth St Cottesloe. He told me how he had pimped his girlfriend out on conjugal visits for favours and drugs. Well dressed cunt, somehow always looked good despite his mouthful of rotting teeth.

I was just 18 and legally allowed into the pubs I had been frequenting since 14. I'd split from my girlfriend and quit my job after an exceptional dose of acid had rewired my brain somewhat. Life was good and ripe for the fucking up of.

Rose knelt at the coffee table mixing up. She was fucken hot, a hot fucken whore just back from from a 14 job night.

"You want some of this shit then Spencer?" Ramon asked.

"Fuck yeah!!!" I shouted over the New York Dolls.

I hadn't tried hammer before, but I was fucken ready. Harmless eh? If not, it certainly hadn't hurt my record collection.

Later that night as Ramon nodded at the kitchen table, Rose gave me a head job on the couch.

Life was good and I felt like a man in control.