Cheating Life

Money was tight this autumn. I had been in a month long tug of war with my immune system and the cost of tissues and amphetamine based flu medication had bled my funds dry. Ordinarily I would have enough money to attempt the Titanic method of curing the flu. All you need is to drink so much alcohol you actually start to die. Once the flu germs realise the vessel they’re on is going down, they abandon ship. By morning your liver will feel slightly sore to the touch, and your urine might be a tad rosier in hue, but your spirits will be particularly buoyant.

I called up Travis, a tall black American who dressed like a jazz bassist and perpetually smelt of weed. I had met Travis at a friend’s art exhibition launch. He walked around the gallery with a small roll of red spot stickers and stuck them next to each painting he hated. When I quizzed him on whether he was buying all that art, he simply replied, “If people think they’re already sold, no one will make the mistake of buying this rubbish”.  We later bonded outside the gallery over our mutual hatred for Oprah and a Turkish cigarette that gave me my first head spin in over a decade.

Every phone conversation with Travis started with him saying “Hold up” and then a series of cavernous coughs. Each heave mined up the sludge of innumerable joints, a practice that occasionally went on for several minutes. When the bark of his lungs eased into an ebbing wheeze, Travis uttered, “Make it quick”. I explained that I was poor, sick, and in need of cheap flu medication. Travis often dealt in a small black market trade of whatever prescription drugs washed up on his dubious shore.

He had a small amount of antiretroviral AIDS medication, but one box of pills would cost more than I make in two months. Plus, it seemed a little extreme for my situation. Travis mentioned an old Milo tin full of night-time flu tablets he’d bought from a bargain bin at a Tasmanian pharmacy in the early two thousands.  He sold the lot to me for ten dollars and an old copy of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More.

As I left his surprisingly normal suburban house Travis said, “You know you could kill two birds with one stone. You’re broke and ill, why not just down a handful of those, and shave the end off the week? Living is expensive, but death is fairly cheap”

A tram ride later and I started to see the logic behind Travis’ suggestion. If I put myself in a thrifty little coma for a weekend, I might actually be able to afford the cost of living in Melbourne. I peeled back the lid on the Milo tin, grabbed a handful of the small neon pebbles and chewed the bitter chemical chalk of the tablets. I felt fairly smug in my plan to cheat life.

A few stops rumbled by and my phone screamed loudly from my breast pocket. The chirpy voice on the other end told me it was Juliette Kringas, the marketing manager for the Melbourne Writers Festival. She asked if I’d be keen on being an official blogger for the festival again. It was to be a paid position. The word paid made my shoulders taut in the same way the word pregnant does. I could afford brand name flu medication with that money, the kind that doesn’t come in a rusty tin.

Juliette asked if I could pop by the Wheeler Centre tomorrow to chat about ideas for the blog. I told her it would be impossible as I would be, quite literally, out for the next few days. You could hear her frown over the phone. “It’s quite urgent. Are you busy today?” My mind raced. I told her I was free right this very minute. After a few moments of hearing her muffled conversation with someone at her office, she agreed and I stumbled off the tram.

I figured I had no more than 30 minutes before I fell into a thrift coma. With a five-minute walk ahead of me and a 20 minute train ride home, I’d have roughly four minutes of conversation before I had to leave, perhaps five if I didn’t mind passing out in my stairwell, which I didn’t. I carved out the most direct route in my mind and with the determined swagger of a man trying to push back the tide of medicated slumber I willed my feet to keep moving forward.

I hadn’t walked more than fifty paces before I noticed the world had turned quite reggae. The shop windows bounced along nonchalantly to the dull gush of my pulse. I could hear my blood flowing all around my head. With every swing of my foot I could feel my leg bones sliding across the cartilage in my kneecaps. I pursed my lips to whistle an accompanying melody to the rhythm of my gait, and promptly urinated in my jeans. My vision started to flicker out just as I let gravity clutch my soft face to her asphalt bosom.

A bright light startled me, and I jerked my head back into consciousness. I squinted through sleep-slicked eyes at a small crowd of elderly Japanese men and women that seemed to be applauding my return to the land of the living. One by one they took turns posing beside me for photographs while I tried to blink some sense into the world. The flash of their cameras caused stains of colours behind my eyes, but I did my best to keep them open. There was a cold wind burning my skin and each breath formed a momentary cloud that slid neatly away from my head.

After every photograph the Japanese pensioners bent over and placed something by my feet. That’s when it occurred to me that I had somehow been standing erect while I was passed out. Somebody must have propped me up while I was out cold. I peered down past my paunch and noticed the dark patch where I had soiled myself was frozen solid. My lower half was encased in an icy scaffold of denim and my hat had fallen off of my head and was filled with small change. “Oh Christ” I thought, “They think I’m busking”.

I tried to move. The ice in my jeans creaked, but my legs wouldn’t budge.  I pleaded with the crowd of Japanese tourists to throw their coffees at my groin. They thought it was part of the performance and put more money into my hat. There was no way my body would thaw unless I heated my crotch up. I would have to pee my way out, but my bladder was dry. You would think it’d be difficult to get a bunch of strangers to pee on you, but when they think you’re a failed arts student who earns money as a living statue, they seem all too happy to oblige.

I never made it to the Wheeler Centre. I had been a living statue for three whole days. Still, I hadn’t spent a cent and I made some decent coin from my accidental busking. On the long cold walk back to my apartment I found the missing Milo tin. Four unconscious junkies were all in a pile on Swanston Street. Each had one hand wedged firmly in the tin. To the casual passer by it looked as though someone had bought one of those novelty can of peanuts that shoot out toy snakes, only someone had gone the extra mile and put some gaunt junkies in instead.

Buyer beware I guess.

Why I don’t high-five

The abrupt tremor of the bed springs roused me into consciousness, but it was the duvet flopping onto my face that broke the surface of my sleep. Through the blur of my eyelashes I saw my girlfriend pull herself out of bed to begin her morning ritual of assessing her bottom in the mirror. She smoothed her pants over her cheeks, gave a brief head tilt and left the room. Her speed indicated a good mood. On other mornings she would shift from the over shoulder rump appraisal to a both hands on hips pout. If her mood were especially dour she would state that she was fat, which was less of a statement and more of a trap for me to wander in to.

There is no chance of oversleeping in our house. One of the windows directly faces the bed and once the sun reaches nine o’clock your dreams take on the luminous red hue of a closed lid. I was still able to recall my dream and when I stood up the evidence jutted out ridiculously from inside my cotton pyjama pants. Penises are only erotic in the context of actual sex, at any other time they are ugly and comical, like Winston Churchill in a skivvy. My dream had been arousing and unsettling. In it I had sex with my girlfriend, no fantasy woman or unattainable celebrity, just my girlfriend. It wasn’t even good sex. It was fairly awkward and it was on our own bed. My mind had conjured up a situation that could have been real if I had rolled five centimetres to my left. I took this as a sign that I needed to inject some excitement into my life.

I put the kettle on and sat on the couch to check my emails. I ignored the usual replies of people insisting they would soon pay me for some articles and opened the one from Steve Grimwade. Steve was the director of the Melbourne Writers Festival. I had met him the year before and watched a warm and friendly guy dissolve into a panic shaped blur that ran around the festival yelling into a walkie-talkie. Steve asked if I could come in to their new offices to chat about this year’s festival and meet with himself and Stephanie. I agreed to meet in the afternoon and started laying out the tools needed to groom my tragic hipster moustache.

I arrived at the address Steve had given me and rang the doorbell. A thin girl with the well-honed smile of a publicist greeted me. She motioned for me to be quiet and pointed around at the vast columns of books precariously stacked against the walls, explaining that they couldn’t afford to hire a new receptionist after the last avalanche buried her. The door slammed behind me and the girl’s face turned a colour called ‘hint of panic’. She covered her head with her arms and remained perfectly still. A faint papery rumble emanated from the walls and a loud crashing sound could be heard in an adjacent room. The girl exhaled in relief, commenting that it sounded like the young fiction pile and that we could still make it to Steve’s office, but it might take a little longer.

As we quietly walked through the office she introduced herself as Juliette, the new marketing manager for the festival. We engaged in small talk and I explained that I was looking forward to meeting Steve and Stephanie. She coughed nervously and changed topic, asking me where I bought my moustache. I was about to explain that I had grown it myself when she got on to her hands and knees and climbed through a small hole in a stack of non-fiction paperbacks. I crouched down and followed her through the tunnel.

After about ten minutes I came out of the bookish hole into a clearing. I stood up and wiped the dust from the shins of my trousers. Juliette pointed to a wooden door. Then she kissed me on the cheek before wiping away the beginnings of a tear. She dived back into the hole and I stood there looking at the door. I knocked and a small voice from inside invited me in. I walked inside to find a surprisingly neat office. Steve was sitting behind a large wooden desk. He smiled warmly at me. I walked over to shake his hand and when he stood up I noticed his shirt was pulled up to his nipples. Protruding from the side of his abdomen was a bulbous fleshy growth about the size of a Samoan bouncer’s head. Someone had scribbled big red lips and some eyes on the bloated bubble of skin that was sticking out of Steve’s torso.

Steve shook my hand and then gestured to the growth and told me that this was Stephanie, his stomach ulcer. They met at last year’s festival. Stephanie was helping with the preparations for this year, but purely in a consultary capacity. His eyes indicated that I should say hello to her. I offered my hand. Steve shook his head and made a kissing motion with his lips. I slowly bent across the desk and tried to commit as little of my lip to Stephanie’s cheek as possible. Steve seemed pleased, explaining that Stephanie had really grown into the role in her time there.

Steve looked at Stephanie and asked her whether they should tell me the news. I think she must have said yes, because he explained that they were keen to get me to come back again this year and be an official blogger for the festival. I thought back to the less than erotic dream I had earlier and decided that the Melbourne Writers Festival could be just the thing to give my life some much needed excitement. I told them I would be delighted to be a part of the team once more. Steve smiled brightly and Stephanie gave a wobble of approval. He raised his hand and eagerly high-fived me, welcoming me back to the team. I smiled at Stephanie and slapped her loudly in the best approximation of a high-five I could give her. Steve recoiled, screaming in horror. He asked why I hit Stephanie in the face and whether I thought it was OK to hit a woman. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Steve told me I had better go.

I got up and walked to the door, looking behind me to see Steve holding some tissues up to Stephanie’s face and gently patting her. I wanted to apologise, but I wasn’t quite sure how to address a stomach ulcer. I shut the door behind me and I could hear him consoling Stephanie from within. I haven’t heard from Steve yet, so I’m not sure if I still have the job or not, but I keep getting these late night calls. I don’t hear a voice on the other line, just the faintest wobbling sound.