Down The Track

This is one end of Oxford Street late at night after a storm. I used to live around here and always be stumbling home late. Now there are herds of parading queens dashing up and down late at night. Tough competition. Toned. Perfectly dressed. They were only crazy souls that he knew, out. You know what this is, Peter'd say, rubbing his empty fingers in front of my face, the smallest joint in the world, rolled just for you. And he'd laugh. Nothing was for free, not even now. The success story from London came by, and couldn't believe we were still here in these same old bars, drunk, of course. Years later some of them would show up in meetings looking so stunned. Everything they had ever done was a water course to a different consciousness. And the success story made him feel even smaller and more disconsolate than he had been already, despite a catalogue of minor successes and curious adventures.

It was then that the aching tide of everything he had done, and everything he had thrown away, came home. He was always meant to be the consciouness, the observer, in the stained yellow froth on the stream of things. Corrosive because it never stayed still. The village had been lost. Blair had an English accent now; owned a number of properties around London, was in real estate; had really done very well. SS strained to remember the bars they had drunk in so long ago; the characters that had been around then. He remembered when Blair had been just another boy hanging around the cross, getting drunk as best he could. He'd gone off to England and come back parading an English boyfriend, blonde, cute. Blair talked of his job and his successes and his love for Tony, who really was very good looking. He had stayed at their beautiful house once, in London once, years after that but still a long long time ago. They were both doing very well in the real estate game, wore suits as they went off to work.

But the boyfriend had died and this time back in Australia Blair was on his own. He'd liked Tony, it was all so free, off to the bath house? They always seemed to be having group sex with the most handsome of men, there in that highly renovated refuge. All the sheets were clean, and new. Things like that impressed him as the height of domestic order. You're not coming? No. Eternally shy. One way to escape the plague. Forever Young goes one of the best selling video clip at the moment, a curious rehash of the past. The Rolling Stones have just been through Sydney and Melbourne for one-night stadium shows. I remember going to see them in about 1971. They were a tiny dot in the distance. But it was part of history none the less. Work is eternal. There are many different projects could keep me busy. Random acts of kindness are increasingly isolated.

IRAQ WATCH:

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/5a258fae-cc1c-11da-a7bf-0000779e2340.html

Bush battles to save Rumsfeld
By Demetri Sevastopuloin Washington
Published: April 15 2006 03:00 Last updated: April 15 2006 03:00
President George W. Bush yesterday issued a vigorous defence of Donald Rumsfeld, his embattled defence secretary.
The president's statement was in an effort to help overcome a growing insurgency among the ranks of retired generals who have faulted Mr Rumsfeld's handling of the war in Iraq.
"Secretary Rumsfeld's energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period," Mr Bush said. "He has my full support."
Mr Bush was responding to a growing chorus of criticism from retired generals, including field commanders who have served during the war in Iraq, calling for Mr Rumsfeld to step down.
In the past month, six retired generals have taken the rare step of publicly criticising the defence secretary over the Iraq war, which has claimed the lives of 2,364 American troops...