Something's burning...IS IT ME?

The landlord asked me if I smoked before I moved in. I said No. Of course I said no. I wanted the place. It was the only place going. Amazing though that a ghetto Landlord is so fussy. The bathroom stinks of mould. If I stay here for too long I'll get a chest infection. But he's not worried about my health. He's just worried about me burning the place down. And yaknow I'm worried too because this place is a fire trap. I have every intention of giving up. As soon as life gives me something else to look forward to. Right now Smoke is the only thing that makes the fire in my belly tangible. I think I can I think I can I think I can.. I'm keeping it real with every puff...

So this morning I read an article about Bill Hicks in the Australian.


'BILL Hicks's disastrous first performance in Australia was illustrative of his entire career. The Texan stand-up comic had come to the Melbourne Comedy Festival in 1993, with the comedy fraternity waiting breathlessly. After years battling alcoholism and drug use, the prodigiously talented performer arrived with serious industry credibility, having got his act together again in the early 1990s by storming two of the world's biggest comedy festivals: Montreal's Just For Laughs and the Edinburgh Fringe.

But in front of a too-cool first-night crowd at Fitzroy's compact Universal Theatre 2, Hicks flamed out in a horrific performance. Comedy parlance says when you fail on stage, you die. Hicks died a thousand deaths that night'

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/wild-bill-hicks/story-e6frg8n6-1225949819692


That would be right. Nothing survives Australia. Not even Bill Hicks. Melbourne killed Judy Garland too. No one is beyond our dead glare and our Icey indifference. The only thing we show any sort of passion for is backstabbing. We kill creative spirits with a shrug and a stare. Show us your money or we'll ship you off to Malaysia. We are the white sheep of the brave new world and the black sheep get shorn and shafted on touch down. You can sew your fucking lips together. We don't care! We fucking hate performance art. Give us sex in the city and a recipe to your cup cakes or shut the fuck up. We're the Lucky country. And you're lucky to be here. If you're really lucky you might get a melanoma or parking fine. Just feel lucky that you're not an Aussie Citizen and subject to our tax department. We should be so lucky lucky lucky lucky. Just like Kylie. Lucky she found a way out of here alive! So don't come here thinking you're too big for your boots because we'll just yawn and treat you like we treat the locals. Then death will start setting in. That tumor you've been putting off will finally get you! The nervous system will finally unravel. The vultures will circle. There's no escape in the land of letting go (of everything you eva dreamed of.)I'm Disaster Diva. I should know....


This time last year I watched Christopher Hitchens smoke his last ciggie for the Sydney Writers Festival. He was our Darling 'Love ya book mate! You're right. There is no fucking GOD. And please smoke outside because no one's gunna save us from The Health Department or the Insurance Industry. But don't worry we won't seat you next to the garbage bins because you're Vanity Fair to us! You stink of land of milk and honey bunny wunny! Puff On Mcduff!'

And he did. I saw it. I have it on video. He sucked up that smoke like he was feeding an engine. It totally turned me on. Then we sent him home and within minutes he was diagnosed. I should have fucked him because the way Hitch was looking at me through the eye piece of my camera and puffing on that ciggie he was up for a good shagging. I hadn't had a fuck in years but I would have broken my celibacy for that hunk a hunk of burning commentary. I would have slapped him around for turning into such a pussy post Sept 11th and then let him fuck my brains out. That post coital ciggie would have really been something...That would have been the smoke of a lifetime. I just know it.

But I wasn't in New York I was in Sydney and the Feeder was watching me. If I hadv'e shagged Hitch the Feeder would have got jealous and sacked me. He owned everything within spitting distance. There's no hope of piggy backing out of Alcatraz with Vanity Fair on ya mind while the feeder is watching. The feeder is a Philistine of the Arts. Oh sorry! that's Philanthropist! He uses the writers as an entre for his meals or he sticks them out the back in the Magdelene Laundry to clean the skid marks on his undies. (and the food don't look so fine at the other end lemme tell ya) He'll stick an apple in that dead pig we call culture and serve it up for the Australia Council just to make those Gatekeeping cunts all feel special. He'll feed a Song Company but knock off a singer. He's less of a patron and more of a bouncer. He makes sure the arts aint sayin nothin. Because in Australia we kill the wild things. If nature doesn't get them first.

I digress...where was I...

The Canary in the Mine.

I'm in the Chinese Restaurant with the Hipster and The Psychopath. They're asking me questions.The Hipster's trying to work out if I'm up for having sex and The Psychopath's is just filling in time until the plates arrive.

I'm very fond of the Hipster but he feels like a brother but I have zero empathy for unhappily married men. Most people don't get married for love anyway. They get married to belong. I have no such refuge. I live permanently on the outside and an unhappily married man aint gunna protect me. Not even a gay one. His real partner in life is not his wife anyway. It's the Psychopath. Those two are attached by the nervous system.

And me. I'm just here for the food. Although I must say it is a disappointment. The prawn omlette, for a start, doesn't have any gravy on it. And it's not a chinese omelette without gravy and spring onions! It's just a garden variety omelette. You can buy it in a chip shop or make if yourself and I wonder at $33.00 if the seafood is fresh. And I'm glad I'm not paying for it. But I appreciate the service. This is my first restaurant experience in Perth.  The Chinese waitresses have a familiar and comforting vibe as though they've been putting napkins in laps since the Gold Rush. They're a hospitality hybrid. A cross between Country Publican and home style Geisha. I watch the men puff up with all their attention. The waitresses don't even look at me because they know I"m not paying. The decore is white linen and mood lighting but I've had better Chinese food on plastic table cloths. 'Of course I don't say any of this'. That would be ungracious. I pop my fork in my mouth and say 'Yummm'. The Psychopath smiles like he cooked it himself. The waitress arrives with the meat plates and lays them down.. Not a shred of chicken to be found. I breathe out in relief and admire the thirty dollar dishes drowning in day-glo sauces. I have nothing to offer this situation but enthusiasm.

 So I Go for Gold.

'Well in my last book I was known as Wednesday Trouble Kennedy. It's the All Girls Adventure Tale of being a One Woman Show in a Brave New World. That was set between Sydney and New York. Snake Kennedy is my latest incarnation. That's a gonzo style road trip around Australia. A girls own adventure tale in the Land of Wild men. So you could say that I am an Adventuress!  'I've been a Post Romantic, A Cultural Refugee,  Disaster Diva and 21st Century Showgirl'. 

By giving so much away I'm breaking all the rules. 'Never tell them where you been or what you know and especially not your age'. You start giving that info away and they'll figure they have you pegged. They will gather all that information at a time of their choosing and use it against you. I know this. I know this too well.  But I keep talking. I can't shut up. I'm wreckless. I like being loose  with information. Everyone is such a damn stingy hoarder with where they've been and what they know. They're scared. I'm scared too but I don't want to be scared. I want to sing! I want to spill my guts to strangers. I want to imagine I'm safe and I'm free even when I'm not. No wonder the world conspires to sedate me.

' Showgirls are gambling women but in a vital way. They're emotional stripteasers. They have no armour. They're peeled prawns with their hearts still beating waiting to be thrown into a pot of boiling water. Dreaming is dangerous. And too much imagination will only get you into trouble. All I ever really wanted was to get my voice in the world. And all the world ever conspired to do was gag my sassy gob. Sooo I've also grown a Lobster Shell and claws with nipple pincers. To torture the truth outta people.'

I look at the Psychopath and wonder why I told him that. It's compulsive. I have personal truth tourettes. I tell people shit that they don't even care about. I give them too much information. I get excited. I can't give myself away fast enough. I'm 'like a child'. I just love to feel the world roll over my tongue and go plop. But sometimes I don't know where to stop. Which is exactly why I need a Lobster Outfit. And a Snake Skin and steel tipped boots and then once I'm fully covered I can run my mouth off 'til I run out of fuel. I can fill it up anywhere. I can take it for a spin around the world without worrying about breathalyser. I am free to be me. To speak it as I see it without danger. To live the tale and to breath it like fire. Talking to strangers is the only thrill left that I don't need a licence for. I don't wanna stop!

 Go for Gold.

'I once found myself in a crack house in New York. It was curiosity that led me there and fear that led me out again. I'm not into crack myself.  I'm more a joint and a nice glass of red with a baked dinner sort of girl. I'd seen what that substance could do to a soul.  I had no romance with it at all. Besides I didn't come to New York to see the view from the penthouse in the projects. I had no ambitions to write A Day in the Life of a Crack Head. Drug stories are so 70's.  I was on a whole other trip and I didn't plan to meet this man or go up to his flat and smoke crack.  In fact I can't even remember how I began talking to him in the first place?  That part is hazy. Perhaps I'd just gone for a walk and maybe sat down for a smoke and maybe he sat down next to me? I don't know what time? From memory it was twilight. It was twilight when we said hello and twilight when we said goodbye. I wasn't one bit afraid which was strange. Because I was galaxies out of my territory once we'd arrived to his top of the town type of crib. And he took me straight to the window and waved his arm across the skyline as if he'd conjured up the city all by himself.  He was the Sky God of the Underworld in the Penthouse of the projects He reigned over crack heads all over Manhattan. They made pilgrimages to see him. And up in the clouds you could forget that the kingdom was a stinking scratching pit of cardboard boxes, you could ignore the empty desperate eyes of the endless stream of zombies who had snorted their soul and the cartilage in their nostrils. You could forget their scabby bodies. If they were meat you'd never buy them. And meat is all they were. If you were in your right mind you would have noted this. But the other mind had taken over. The mind that thought she was Bukowski or Hunter S Thompson. Cock of Osiris by any other name and his story was so damn poetic I had to hear all of it....'

The Hipster and the Psychopath are both leaning in now. The Psychopath is now looking at me with the possibility that he'll get his end in if the Hipster ever manages to lure me back to their hotel.  The Hipster is thinking about all the crack he'll never have while the Psychopath is thinking 'How am I going to grease her?'  I mean if a girl is gunna find herself in a crackhouse in New York then what's to say that she wouldn't go home with a respectable wage earning tax paying Murderer in Perth. I could read his mind. I knew that's what he was thinking. Criminal types always misinterpret me. They don't think like Poets. They think like gangsters. And I've know I've gotta wind my way outta this story so nobody can say I was looking for trouble. 'Bless me father for I..'. 

'I'm a Poet you see and the words are really all that I have so I don't really want to get high. I just want to to go deep. I'm a deep sea diver. An underground explorer, an emotional miner and I'm on my 9th life.  SoI've gotta get this story down and out. I don't know why but I feel this urgency..it's burning...it's gone way past desire. It's closer to torture.  You see my book it started with a dream. There was this cat. It was a black cat and for some reason I have no idea what it was you'll have to ask my sub conscious.  I picked up an axe and I chopped that cat in two and I don't know why I did that? Can you imagine? It was HORRIFYING.  But the cat didn't die. It just screamed from both ends and danced around in bloody entrails.  I couldn't stand it.  so I picked up a box to drop on it's head and put it out of it's misery. And when the cat looked up into my face I realised that cat was ME!

'Nup. You're not the Cat'. The Psychopath sits back.  You're definitely not the cat.

He's looking right through me. 

'What am I then?'

'You're the Canary. ' 

You're the Canary. (Part 3 of The Psychopath and the Hipster)

The Psychopath is smilling like he swallowed me.

Instantly I get a picture of Kylie.

'What do you mean I'm the Canary? Is that like a Budgie?' I'm certainly not Kylie! I couldn't smile my way through a tumor and a rat of a boyfriend. At least Britney spacked out when she was cornered. Gnash those pearly whites and dig your fangs into the bone and spit like a viper. Snakes are survivors. I'm no bird. What's the value of a bird with clipped wings and no feathers? Being a budgie didn't help Kylie. Everybody loved her but she still ended up with a Love Rat! He devalued and discarded her in public. What a french bastard! Be careful of whom you kiss lest they damp the spark in your pussy (power) He was vermin! If my head was bald I'd be bloody well using it to haunt him. Budgie Revenge!

The Psychopath is staring at me intently. He's got a half grin on his face like he cornered a live one. His fist is holding up his chin. His elbows are on the table. The Hipsters eyes are full of anticipation.

'I felt awful watching her flying career turned into a mortality play. We had a lot in common at that time. Of course she's a very rich kitchy stadium sized feathers and sequins, lazors and short legs type of Showgirl and I'm more a small room in a room full of drunken poets with two channel lighting board. Have to bomb the place to get money out of them sorta broad with pins to die for. But I can't sing either. I mostly talk.'

'I'd never have noticed'

' But nevertheless I came up with the name of my book 21st Century Showgirl before Kylie announced her Showgirl tour which I suspected was some sort of sign from the Showgirl Heavens! Like we were both tuning in to the Great Showgirl Unconscious and had found ourselves at other ends of the spotlight but in exactly the same position. Do you know what I mean?'

They don't have a clue what I'm talking about but I don't care. The Psychopath is still listening and I"m on a roll. The Hipster stopped listening ages ago. His soul is still catching up from Sydney I let it go and I focus on the Psychopath who doesn't have a soul so he's right here in the moment. Listening. It's like having an audience with the Devil. Auditioning for the Chorus line in Hades. I continue...

'And there I was having my own mortality nightmare in New York when we found out that Kylie had cancer. And all of a sudden Kylie and I had something in common. Tragedy! I mean not the small stuff....boys gone...boo hoo! kettle's on! What next? The BIG ONE!. The Oh No! Fuck me! I'm Dead! Finished! DOOMED! That's wrong?

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

'And once you've died on that level well you never come back again. Well you come back but you never come back as you were. That kitty is dead. She's been ahniliated and she's not a cartoon character. You can't just pick up the pencil and re-create her.. And the only difference between Kylie and me is that when she went through her Mortality Moment she handled her suffering with dignity and grace and I screamed and yelled and waved my arms around like a drowning woman and wrote a book about it. But mortality is a funny one because after you've wrestled with it you can't just pick up where you left off and pretend you're Aphrodite. I know forty is the new thirty but Kylie's last tour was ridiculous. Her through line makes no sense. She lost me again... What do you mean Canary? '

'Canary in the Coal Mine. You'll sing through everything. You won't shut up. The day you stop singing is the day that you're dead. Then we know we should get the fuck out. Mine's are dangerous. And Canarys are oblivious. You're an oblivious type. I can tell.'

'Am I ?'

I withdraw. I have nothing to say anymore. I just sit there quietly thinking. He's not very charming for a Psychopath. He musn't want anything from me. But he still wants to watch me grab for the bait. He's the cat. I'm the bird. That's the only game he knows how to play. And he's got me in a gilded chinese fucking restaurant as a canary. The prick. Singing away until I drop off my perch. Is that how he sees me? Psychopaths are tricky because they've got a very perceptive eye for who you really are. They know when you're kidding yourself. They know before you do. They're clever like that. They get into your psyche through your vanity and weakness. They gently prod for pecadillo, the poke around your pockets of corruption. So you'd better know how deep those pockets are, because soon enough they'll empty them onto your lap. With a gag in your mouth and your hands tied behind I know their caper. That's why I give everything away so there's nothing to ransak. No corner to hide in. No silent and festering scabs to stick fingers in. I have offered my life on a plate. And then watched him come in for the kill. He even offered to knock off my enemies over prawn toast. He was checking my need for revenge but murder is so not my style and his offer repulsed me. But Magical Thinking sure has been a problem. Not to mention Malignant Optimism. And I have to admit to times when I've been just a tad Oblivious. So he might have got me there. But I don't think it's who I am. I'm less a song bird and more a screamer. I wonder what time it is and what time the trains run to? The plates have been cleared and the glasses are empty.

'Thankyou. I have to go now. '

'Come back with us? says the Hipster. 'We have a spare room at our apartment'. And some more Mount Gay rum in the bar there. ' We can all kick on. Come On. It'll be fun. We'll drive you back home in the morning.'

'Yeah sure'. That's a great idea!'

I'll go back to the apartment so they can both take turns raping me and then go to the Police I don't trust in the morning. That is if they Psychopath hasn't killed me already. I mean I know I'm a little dizzy but what do they think I am? Oblivious or something?

This is my 9th life.