Monday, June 23, 2014

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. ' 


4 comments:

  1. Bravissimo! Cheering for you, my dear from the sidelines in Jersey.

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  2. Boom! Love that ending...right in the guts! Ravenous rave Mz Diva! <3

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  3. There's your book title. Ninth Life.

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  4. look v.forward to reading the book, whatever the title, Mz D... brilliant stuff.x

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