Cursed, Blessed

*

He could remember it so clearly, those poisonous days. Why they would keep recurring now, in this clammy heat, when all was well and he slept each night against an over-heated body as if it was a water bottle, well, times were out of joint now, he only worried, knew, simply because nothing was permanent, that they would end. But in those days, chemically scarred, he knew nothing. He hadn't been to sleep for at least ten days; unless it was nodding waking sleeps he was not cognisant of. He had meant to say to Ross: you really belong in Peak Experiences Anonymous, except there's no such thing. What he did say, which sounded insulting, is I bet you end up effing off AA and joining Sex Addicts Anonymous; which was just another grotty hyper experience. He didn't know what he meant to say really, except he understood when he talked about the hold ups and the kilos of dope and the police lurking on corners and holding up gangsters, the guns, the dramas, the tragedies, the lines on his arm from the latest suicide attempt, the tragedies that befell everyone around him, that he understood. He had been, seen and lived through similar experiences all his life; sometimes from a distance, sometimes in the middle, always the observer, always the court clown. Everything was right with the world; they could only laugh.

Ross had flown all the way from Bangkok to Bombay for a yoga retreat and after the first night was horrified, indeed utterly shocked, to discover that after 7pm they all tottered off to meditate and go to sleep; where are the bars, where are the clubs, where are the girls, what the heck am I expected to do, sit here and stare at my navel, wank off? What the hell. So the next morning he caught a flight straight to Bangkok; and those days was the last time he spoke to him before he returned to his life of crime in the UK. And to God knows what future. Some people have even further to fall. For some people there is no bottom, no off switch, no end to the dramas which will populate their lives. Get a job, meet a girl, have children, be a normal man, stop being a bad boy, stop drinking, stop drugging, stop staying up all night in the random chase, men on the hunt through the poisonous city air, lurking on corners, finding triumphs in the shadows, blessed relief in the dark, take this advice from an older man, he said, as if he had ever taken his own advice.

So why did he keep remembering that appalling day when he decided after ten days without sleep, with bruises up and down both arms and that insane glaze in his face which showed he had pushed things long past wherever they should have been pushed; where there was no coming back; where there was nothing normal; that it would be a great idea to throw a couple of trips down his throat to stir the poisonous paranoia that was already dripping through his veins, the psychosis that was already well formed. And how was it that he decided after the trips began to take effect that it would be a great idea to go to a gay sauna; and how was it that when he stood there shivering in that dank damp place where he could hear every drip of water within the entire building, for God's sake he could hear the rats scuttling a block away, he could hear the thoughts of the cops way up on Oxford Street and he could enter the deranged thoughts of the hobos sleeping in the rock alcoves down at Bondi Beach, how was this in any way a good idea? He heard the desperate panting. He heard the saddest, loneliest of orgasms through the thin partition walls. He saw the Aids sick men showering in the open shower area, thin, desperate, looking at him for love because there was always one last turn, one last hope, one last chance at happiness before death; the most miserable of deaths. How was any of it a good idea?

Exiting in horror, as sad as he had ever been, he went as he always did to the only place in the city which made him happy, not home to that apartment where the rank disapproval of the queens he was temporarily living with, shocked by his level of dissolution, not there where they gathered around the kitchen table and he drank another bottle of Southern Comfort or Jack Daniels and made no sense at all, but to that rooftop in Elizabeth Bay only he knew, from years gone by, how to access, past the supposedly locked entrance, up the supposedly private lift, through the supposedly secure windows and out onto the rooftop, his rooftop, his place, a place where no one could get to him, no one could say anything, where it didn't matter how splintered his consciousness, how desperate his longing, how twisted and hopelessly fractured he had become, he was safe. He could be himself, whatever that might be; the observer, the frightened boy, the desolate warrior, the desperately wasted talent, and watch the sunrise across the city, across Ruschutter's Bay Park, across the harbour, the sunlight picking out the yachts, the early morning ferries, the joggers; where the light slowly lit up the surrounding apartments, to the only place in this entire awful city that was truly his. Why think of these things now? When he finally felt himself, here in an upmarket apartment in Bangkok, Dee Jai, the boy beamed, I am happy. "When you feel that hope is gone, look inside you where you're strong..." went the CD player. There really was such a thing as a gay soundtrack.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/tony-abbott-warns-of-backlash-over-dumping-of-kevin-rudd/story-e6frg6nf-1225889563746

TONY Abbott has warned of a northern backlash against Labor over the "brutal execution" of former PM and Queenslander Kevin Rudd.

But Julia Gillard has played down the concerns, declaring she wants to be a Prime Minister for all Australians.

Both leaders visited Brisbane yesterday as their parties continued to crank up their campaign apparatus ahead of the election.

With the state peppered with marginal seats, Queensland will be a key battleground in the next federal poll.

Speaking during a visit to Brisbane's Rocklea Fruit and vegetable markets, which handle produce worth $1 billion a year, the Opposition Leader said Labor faced three serious electoral problems in Queensland.

"The first is the brutal execution of the hometown hero, the second is the continuing . . . uncertainty associated with the mining tax, and the third is the general problem of the Labor brand here in Queensland, where a lot of people feel pretty badly dudded by Anna Bligh's pre-election deceit," Mr Abbott said.

"Obviously, state and federal elections are different. Nevertheless, problems with the Labor brand, I think, are general, at least in Queensland and NSW."

If people believed they had been dudded by state Labor, they were more likely to believe they were being conned by federal Labor, the Coalition leader said.

Mr Abbott spent more than an hour touring the market, where he received cheers from workers as he helped them move pallets, and carted boxes on his shoulders.

However, Ms Gillard said she believed it was important for a national leader to travel across the nation to speak to people about their concerns.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thailand-allows-russian-pianist-on-child-sex-charge-to-leave-2022131.html

A famed Russian pianist and conductor who is accused of raping a teenage boy in a Thai resort has been allowed to leave the country and prepare for a forthcoming concert appearance.

A court in the coastal town of Pattaya granted bail to Mikhail Pletnev and gave him permission to fly to Europe, as long he returns within the next 12 days.

Police said the 53-year-old musician, who has several properties in the resort, has denied the allegations and intends to return to Thailand to defend himself.

"We expect him to come back given that he is famous and that he claims that he is innocent. And since he has hired a legal team, we expect him to come back to fight the case," said Lt-Colonel Omsin Sukkankaa, a police spokesman.

The musician, who in 2005 won a Grammy award for his arrangement of Prokofiev's Cinderella, is due to lead his orchestra in a summer music festival in Macedonia next week.

Reports say the organisers of the event in the town of Ohrid expect Mr Pletnev and his fellow musicians to participate and that the allegations will be countered with a defence of mistaken identity.

Yet not everyone approves of the decision by the court to allow the high-profile conductor bail of $9,000 (£6,000) and permission to fly out of Thailand.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Bangkok_skyline.jpg