No One Gives a Fuck Anymore

I woke up on this shitty bench.

I must have passed out in this damn heat.

If I was Forrest Gump, this is where I’d start ranting about how I became a billionaire selling shrimp and investing in apples, but it’s not like that.

Twenty-four hours ago, I was in a Parisian night suit with a rip in the anus, getting reamed by a furry hippo in lipstick called Arsehole Taylor, using Black and Gold polyunsaturated margarine as lube. And yeah, it is better for the cholesterol. Thanks for asking.

The blokes called him Arsehole Taylor because he liked arseholes, and he was one. That’s what I’ll tell people when they ask about my time in the gaff. It’s romantic. I’ve been working on it for a while.

You’re the first I’ve told about this. I’m Meth Gump. Do you see that off-white feather that just landed on my boot? It’s the same colour as the Sydney Opera House.

And yeah, I fucked up a waiter because he gave me a butter knife to cut sourdough. What a prick, right? Him, I mean, not me. Everyone knows a butter knife is too blunt to cut sourdough. You need something meaner, sharper, more serrated. This prick wants me to fling my toast at some fat-lipped professor because I can’t control my knife. Would you ask Zorro to go into battle with a — I don’t know — a blunt sword?

So now you think I’m some fucking psycho, but it’s not like that either. I was just in a bad place. Anyone could have gotten what the waiter got. It wasn’t personal. That’s what I told him as he bled out on the floor.

And now I’ve got an irrational fear of bread. I mean, it’s only mild. It’s not like I run out of the room when there’s bread. It’s more of a reminder of what has been. My preferred carb is rice. Fuck bread.

I’m not just changing the subject here, either. The connection is that I beat the shit out of him. It’s why I’m on this hot bench —my first day out in six months.

It’s what they call justice.

It’s twenty-past-five, and my ride isn’t here yet. When I say my ride, I mean the bus. There’s no actual ride to speak of. You don’t get rides after six months. Rides are for hardheads doing life for robbing Las Vegas casinos.

I wish I had a hat. My head is cooking like a bald soufflé, and I’m sweating like a Black Iberian on performance-enhancing drugs.

***

The bus has finally arrived, and it stinks. Now I have to jog up the stairs like I ride buses all the time, and I still have a zest for life.

There’s whispering — especially two women in the back seat. They know this bus stop. It’s where all the hardheads, just released, get the bus. They’re probably wondering what I did. They’re probably wondering if I shot my uncle or —

“Come on, Mate, move it.” It’s Anaemic Shrek, the driver.

I hand him the chalky ticket, and he rips it in half. When I turn back to the crowd, no one gives a fuck anymore. They’ve all gone back to staring out the window, dreaming of their next shot of GBH or the correct number of onions in a traditional mince and potato flange. Fuck knows what a flange is. I just made it up.

I hate buses. Trains I can handle — and trams — but there’s something depressing about buses. Happy people are rare on buses because it’s the lowest of the low. If you’re riding a bus, someone shat in your potatoes, Mate. You’re right down there.

Not one smile. Not one look to say,

I’m a human. You’re a human. Let’s breathe the same rancid air for forty-four minutes.

No one gives a fuck anymore.

The air on this bus is warm and musky, like having your head buried deep in a pussy. The deranged weatherman: Today will be humid, with a thirty-two per cent chance of crabs.

On the subject of love, it’s twelve complete moon cycles since my wife’s head came apart like an organic nashi pear under the rear left wheel of an ultramarine Ford Maverick. And don’t freak out, alright? I know I just sprung that on you, but it was bound to come out eventually.

I’m not even sure why I told you. I suppose it’s so you don’t think I’m the kind of person that randomly attacks waiters.

I suppose I must care what you think about me.

Fuck it.

I once watched a YouTube video where this ex-convict called Ted told people that dropping the soap in prison was a myth. Ted was wrong, that prick. It’s not a myth. Bars of soap get dropped every day, and you can’t do anything about it because you’re too afraid to die bleeding out in a prison hospital. It’s just easier to die from too much criminal spunk up the potty.

The hum of this bus is sickening. It’s like someone has eaten a power tool, and it’s going off inside their stomach — low, muffled vibration like a deranged chi machine. Fuck buses.

We’re still in the country — all green fields and animals. There’s a sheep with a bird on its back. Is that a sign? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just a bird on a sheep’s back.

There was this inmate called Mike Jagger. He hated it when people called him Mick. And he was no Rolling Stone — whatever the fuck that means.

People think you’ve got to be physically big to win a fight, but that’s not true. You’ve got to be big in the mind. The most important question is, who is willing to go further? You can have a stinging right hook, but if you aren’t ready to kill your opponent, you’re weak.

Mike Jagger was willing to do anything — rip your nutsack off — jam his thumbs in your eyes — bite you all over, crunching his teeth through your fingers like a bloody Twix without hesitation. He’s small, but no one touches Mike. Because, if you’re fighting Mike, you’ll have to kill the fucker. And most prisoners don’t want to kill. They want to go home and smoke weed on their couch. Life just rear-ended them on the wrong day, and they reacted. Now they find themselves surrounded by violent criminals in cramped conditions.

It’s a thinking man’s rehabilitation.

It worked for me. I’ll do just about anything not to go back there. I’d be Harrison Ford getting pursued by that Tommy Lee from Motley Crue across the crocodile plains. I’d throw myself off a building before I let them take me back.

I’m not even joking.

The fucking hum is still going. Fucking power tool. Just digest it already. I’d get out and walk, but I’m only eighteen minutes in — twenty-sixish to go.

The girl across from me is too cute to be on this bus. I point to the graffiti above her head that says fat cunts. And I say something like,

“Pretty rude, eh?”

She ignores me.

At the same time, I notice I’m sitting on a brown stain, only it’s dry and flakey, and all you can do is hope it’s Coke, not Kak, as in Kaka Kola.

I want to tell her this, but I can’t figure out the words, so I ask her what she’s reading instead, but I say it as quiet as a mouse in a library, and there’s no way she can hear me. She’s not fucking Spiderman or whatever.

I don’t really want a conversation anyway. I just want her to acknowledge my presence and say,

I’m a human. You’re a human. Let’s breathe the same pungent air for another twenty-four and a half minutes.

No one gives a fuck anymore.

There’s a woman four seats up with a dog that looks like a pit bull, so I go over and ask if I can pat the dog. She tells me his name is Charlie and that he loves pats. I tickle Charlie’s face, and he licks mine. I get a damn lump in my throat, and tears come. I didn’t want this grief. I just wanted to pat a dog.

We had a dog. But none of us was available anymore — my wife being dead and me being an inmate — so he got sent to a pound, where they stuck a needle of green shit in him. No one would have taken him because he was too old. I let him down, and that feels like a ball of molten metal in the middle of my chest.

Charlie’s owner asks if I’m alright. She’s got a deranged ginger perm and a purple shell suit. Her lipstick is really fucking red like she’s been sucking off Elmo.

“I’m fine. I just had a dog like yours once,” I tell her.

Damn it, Charlie. I was doing just fine till you came along.

I return to my seat, and things are getting semi-industrial. We’re in the Western suburbs now, and there’s a much denser population of poor people than in the imperialist East where I used to live. I was trained in the ways of the imperialists from a young age — private all-boys. After that, I was all CK suits, scotch and money — until the shit show.

The point is, I’m a fucking prawn out of water on this side of town. Where are the stinking middle class dipping their genitals in the avocado puree with lobster butter or whatever? It’s not that I miss them or anything. I just feel a little out of place.

“Mini Orsis,” says this weird guy sitting at the back. He looks like Rick Stein without teeth. He nods his head out of the window and looks back at me.

“Mini Orsis,” he says again, pointing out the window.

I spot the miniature horses. At first, they’re real cute, with their fluffy heads and tiny legs. Then I notice their dicks are a foot of rope, and that’s not even stiff — not even a bit stiff.

Charlie’s owner has a good look. She seems like the type that might fuck a miniature horse. I don’t mean that to be derogatory. We’re all just one car crash away from fucking a miniature horse.

I reckon I could convince myself to fuck a miniature horse or at least let them fuck me while Charlie’s owner watched. Not Charlie, though. I can’t stand it when dogs watch you fuck. They just look like they are enjoying it too much.

***

I give Charlie one last pat on the way off the gastrointestinal power tool and step down into the lower intestine of society.

Footscray station is a stinking arsehole of a place, and I’m shitting a brick. I’m starting again fresh. I’m like a newborn baby in this world — innocent, pink, sensitive skin — ready to cry at anything.

There’s a shitty phone box covered in graffiti and a dried substance that could easily be Kaka Kola. I negotiate the brown crustacean and take a moment to bypass the temptation to follow the order on the phone box wall, which says, for a good fuck, call Samir.

I call the number on my discharge summary instead, and this social worker called Keith says he can come to pick me up. I tell him I’d rather walk, but he insists, so I tell him I’m at Footscray station, and he starts going on about some noodle place opposite. I want to tell him I just got out of the gaff, and noodles are the last thing on my mind, but I don’t since the guy is putting me up. Still, he keeps talking. Is this prick on speed?

Footscray seems alright, I suppose. There are a lot of Muslims, though. I think that’s alright. I’m fairly sure our enemies are Russia and China these days. Or, at least, they were six months ago. I’ll have to check the newspapers.

And no, I’m not some bright young skinhead like Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper, if that’s what you’re thinking. Sure, the illegal spunk of racism is well-established in my rectum. I was informationally raped from an early age, but I’m working on it, alright?

I shuffle past all the dirty taxis to the noodle shop this Keith fucker told me about. The shop stinks like a homeless guy’s underpants. It should be called Rectums and Coriander. Is that racist? I don’t think so. If anything, it’s herbism. Thankfully, the stench is from a grid outside the shop. It’s not the smell of noodles.

Some Greek-looking man is smoking, and I want to ask him for a cigarette, but I’m terrified. I’m still in the East in my office, ignoring my wife, making sweet love to an Excel spreadsheet and drinking scotch mixed with Gaviscon — too good to ask for help and too rich to ask for a cigarette. I have seven dollars and fifty-five cents, and it’s not 1981.

Some fucker is tapping my shoulder. I spin around to see a sick-looking bastard with brown teeth and spew coating his Marilyn Manson t-shirt and a hole where his nose used to be. He asks me for change, and I tell him to fuck off, primarily out of fear.

I back into this old lady, causing her to drop her purse and coins all over the ground. So, now I’m apologising like Hugh Grant and picking these filthy coins up off the wretched pavement. But why? How did this happen? Who uses coins these days anyway?

I give her the coins back, expecting thanks, but she mutters something and fucks off. I’m glad. I caused her the shit in the first place. Why would she say thanks? It’s justice.

The noseless man has fucked off, too. He is over by the Greek bloke who also tells him to fuck off, only louder and more aggressively, and without taking out a pensioner. I should be taking notes.

I’m feeling anxious as fuck as I head past the motorised Joni Mitchell Big Bird taxis to a caravan at the bottom of the station steps. They sell chips, burgers, hot dogs — that kind of crap. I ask the guy for water, and he gives me a look like I asked to finger his daughter. Then he hands me a bottle, and I give him three dollars of my seven odd. It’s fucking expensive for a bit of water. Sixty per cent of my body is made from this shit. Why don’t I just drink myself?

I take a couple of deep breaths. There’s a lot of plastic wrapped around this tiny bit of water. I don’t want to think about these things, but the thoughts keep coming. I can’t stop the thoughts. They’ll never stop. I can’t control them. Some fucker is pouring hot and cold water over me simultaneously, and here comes the panic, like the school bully coming across the field. Fuck.

There’s a lame toot, and I swing around. Some greasy fucker is waving at me from a shit-cream Ford Falcon. Or maybe he’s waving at someone else. Maybe that’s the guy — Keith.

I drink more water, but it’s too cold and feels like a metal pipe in my throat. I’m sweating like a bastard, and he’s getting out of the car.

Fuck.

Now, I’m running in the other direction.

This is the bit where Meth Gump can’t handle what is happening, so he runs around the country.

I don’t know why. I just felt like running.

Run Meth, RUN.

At some stage, I realise I have to go back so I don’t get lost and have to sleep on these greasy streets. I feel a bit better, anyway. Running always helps.

I think I’m okay until I pass an aquarium and stop to tap on the window at the poor fuckers trapped in their tanks. Things can always be worse. Aren’t we just like fish? Aren’t we this drop of consciousness trapped in the body?

The claustrophobia is kicking in like a lousy pill now, and I want to escape my body. The hot and cold water is rushing again, and I shake my head, running across the road and away from the station again.

This is fucking ridiculous. I have to go back.

Keith, the social worker, is leaning against the shit-cream Falcon, flicking his greasy black-grey hair and smiling like a sex offender. He’s wearing a faded Hawaii Five-O shirt with one of those spiked belts, and his arse is way too small. You can’t trust a man with a tiny arse. Still, it matches the rest of his body which looks like he hasn’t eaten in a year or two.

I don’t care about any of it. I’m too busy staring at the cigarette in his hand.

***

This prick needs to clean up his car. I’m sitting among McDonald’s bags and shit. Then again, at least I can breathe into them in the event of another flip-out. The smell of genetically modified canola oil always calms me down.

The inside of this car smells like cheese, and not the good type either. It’s not aged cheddar or Red Leicester or King Island double cream brie.

It’s the type of cheese that collects in places — the thirty-day-old pot of yoghurt — human cheese, thrush. Dick cheese.

Whatever you want to call it, it’s sour and unpleasant.

The cigarette smoke makes it mildly better. I’d call it a carcinogenic air freshener, but all air fresheners are carcinogenic, including cheese-flavoured Christmas trees.

Humans are fucking hogs. We evolved to use toiletries to disguise it, but if hogs and dogs used deodorant, we might think they were civilised animals too. Truth is, none of us are. We are as horrific as any other creature. We just have Speedstick.

“How you doin, Pal?” Keith asks. He sounds like Ray Winstone on helium, and it’s the kind of question asked in the kind of tone you don’t need following a panic attack.

“Fine,” I tell him, staring out of the window. I’ve got nothing else. I suck down on the cheap cigarette he gave me. It’s called a Longbeach.

Surely there’s something else to say. I’m not Julian Assange. I’m a damn free citizen.

Say something, for fuck’s sake.

“How much is a packet of ciggies these days?” I ask like I’m Ariana Huffington at some social event. It’s just something to say, damn it. We need to connect. I’m starting again fresh, like a newborn baby — innocent, pink and all that crap.

“Depends on the brand,” he tells me. “I smoke these — Longbeach. Forty for sixty bucks, they are. Yer quality shit though, like yer Marlboros — talking twenty-five for fifty bucks.”

I’m trying to think of something to say next to keep this shit going so I don’t have to listen to these damn thoughts, but I don’t know what the fuck he is talking about because I only started smoking in the last six months.

“Fifty bucks, eh?” I say, and there’s an uncomfortable pause.

“I smoked chop-chop in the gaff,” I tell him. He nods and flicks his ciggy end out of the window. Then he starts going on about the time he tried to grow chop-chop and got chased by a police helicopter. Fuck knows if he is lying.

Chop-chop is homegrown tobacco, in case you’re wondering. It’s more illegal than cocaine in Australia. You get life for growing enough of it. Fuck knows why. It’s horrible. Smoking chop-chop is like sucking off a wasp. This cheap Longbeach is like Panama Gold in comparison — whatever that means.

---

Listen up, you fannies. If you liked what you just read, you should know this is the first chapter from my book, Midnight in Footscray which incidentally is free on Kindle for the next seventy two damn hours. So if ya fancy it, go grab it for free would ya with ya sticky biscuit fingers like Bill Sykes n that. Link below.