The Night I Lost My Head

Coming back to earth is an interesting experience.

I stood on a bottle, it slipped from under my foot, and the concrete gave me a thunderous uppercut. I’d say I just got run over by a truck, but not even Big Rigg Hendricks could hit like this.

Get up, dust off, keep drinking. I’m not going home just because of this shit.

The following days were like a hangover that just wouldn’t end. Whatever planet is beyond pain, that’s where I was. Once the fog finally lifted, I was left with a nice scar on my chin as a reminder of what can happen.

I couldn’t feel my fucking face, but I’ve never felt more alive than I did in that moment.

Perfect

She has painted toenails, and her bed always runs from east to west.

I dropped my phone while trying to enter in her number. Not nervous, just drunk. I’ll thank her for not counting that against me.

She makes me want to be someone better.

Russell Brand, Booky Wook 2, he recounts the first night he took Kate Moss home. The next morning, he popped out, for the Sunday paper or a bottle of milk or a jar of coffee or some such (might be mistaking it in the retelling, but that’s not the important detail), with the intent to test Kate out. If she simply left and left things as they were, he’d know she only meant it to be for one night. But If she made the bed before leaving, however, he knew that she wanted to come back. She made the bed.

I want to come back. I make the bed. I’m overjoyed that she notices.

Waking up next to her for the first time is my Groundhog Day moment. It was a precious, perfect few seconds of peaceful contentment that I’ll always remember but will never get back. If I could re-live that for the rest of my life, I’d be happy.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

I throw myself out of a taxi, just in time for my insides to throw themselves out onto the pavement. I sit marinating in the sun beside the viscous pile of sick for what feels like days, paralysed in my own stupor.

Eventually I regroup enough to stagger behind a building and piss out some poisons, and then wander homeward bound by foot.

Guilty.

I’m a tourist, I’m a wreck, I’m a vomit-green transparency, lighting up a cigarette.

Postcards of Persuasion

I knew it couldn’t last.

She swept towards me, stopping me in a doorway, already knowing my name and having formed a mythology in her mind. Later, seemingly unsatisfied with my consistent lack of eye contact, she pushed my hair out of my eyes, and held my face in place so that my gaze couldn’t escape hers. I was spellbound.

She was a black celebration, in dress, shoes and fingernails, contrasting starkly with her golden hair and flawless porcelain skin. A dark jewel hung from a pendant between her breasts, drawing attention to a form that can only be described as other-worldly. We’ve met for a second time, a result of mutual intrigue. She charms further with her champagne’d sway.

We ring in the new year with a kiss. We shouldn’t be doing this. She tells me in the sober morning that I look like a pirate. I want to be a pirate.

I’m enveloped thickly in J&B as I approach her house late on a steamy February evening. Unable to sleep, intimidated by the impossible beauty of her slumbering shape beside me, I depart just before sunrise, hot wind blowing away the last remnants of the dream on a lengthy walk home.

I knew I couldn’t last.

Wasted Days

It’s been a few hours between drinks, but 630-odd days between blogs. During this time, I’ve learnt more about myself and others than I ever thought possible. I’ve drank, smoked and fucked with a fervour, a filth and a fury of which I’d only previously dreamed. I’ve spilt blood, sweat, tears and drinks, in search of meaning and in search of truth. I feel like a better man, more realised, whole and aware of myself than ever before, but a single thought still plagues me – I thought I would be more than this.

My search for enlightenment has led me to question my achievements and my success in life, my value as a person, and my contribution to the lives of others. What is achievement? What is success? Is it how much money I have in the bank? Is it being a good drinker? Is it being “good in bed”? Is it being a good conversationalist? Everyone wants their life and their existence to have purpose and meaning, but as long as you are happy, does it really matter if you’re really “making a difference” to the lives of others, or how others perceive you, or is that just all ego-driven and ego-boosting bullshit? Well, I’ll be honest, I’m not happy. I’m brimming with dissatisfaction, disaffection and unfocussed rage, feeling bored, whored, tired and ignored. I feel like I could – I should – be doing more with, giving more and getting more from the life I’ve been given. The jealous, petty, tempestuous, selfish only child in me causes me to crave more attention, love and adoration than I’m getting, and my ego feels disappointed that the vessel in which it is encased is not doing anything especially worthy of gaining such accolades from others on a consistent basis. I feel like a fertile and brilliant mind and body are going to waste while getting wasted, trapped in a repetitive cycle. It’s my own doing, yet knowing that doesn’t help me escape the trap.

Maybe I am successful. Maybe what I do is just “what I do”, and maybe I do it well, and should keep doing it. Maybe there is no material result or tangible end game to be achieved. Maybe it’s not all a video game, building from one level to the next. Maybe everything is just liquid, ebbing and flowing up and down, in and out like the tide, never actually meant to accumulate in size. Maybe this is all there is. Maybe everything is temporary, never permanent.

Maybe I just don’t know. Maybe my search has only just begun.

Prettyyyy… Prettyyyy… Prettyyyy good…

A conversation had while standing at the urinal in the gents upstairs at Rhino Room, at about 4:15am this morning –

Other guy: How’s it going mate?
Me: Yeah, going well! Yourself?
Other guy: Prettyyyyy… Prettyyyyy… Prettyyyy good…
*Curb Your Enthusiasm-style staredown ensues*
Me: Ok… Alright…

As a big Curb fan, this was one of the more hilarious random encounters I’ve had with a stranger. The fact that all this occured in the male toilets while we both had swords drawn makes the phrasing “random encounter… with a stranger” sound like there was some risky business going on, but it was all quite an innocent laugh (neither of us even glanced downwards). It’s always good to meet people who are on the same wavelength.

All is quiet on New Year’s Day…

41 degrees in Adelaide today. Combine such intense calidity with fierce alcohol-induced dehydration and the hazy fog of morning-after-the-big-night-before disorientation, and it’s a Burke & Wills-style death trip just to get out of bed to take a piss.

I, however, eventually alighted from my comfy air bed, and braved the elements (and dodged a heat-affected cat that was reclining directly in my stumbling line outside my bedroom door) to not only make the journey to the household toilet, but venture into the kitchen as well for some well-earned sustainance in the form of rolled oats, soy milk and orange juice.

As I ate my breakfast (at 3 in the afternoon), I recalled with fondness the events of the night before (one of which I’ll document here later), along with entertaining the inevitable “what will the next twelve months hold for me” thoughts that come with the bright new year. I’ve never really been very active in making change in my life, and I’ve never made a New Year’s resolution. I’ve always thought they were just an idealistic wank, really. That being said, I’m proceeding to give myself a Happy New Year handjob and declaring that in 2012, I’m on the pursuit of happiness. Wanting to be happy sounds simple, even obvious, but it’s an idea that I’ve gotten away from, or more correctly, never really embraced in the first place. I’ve never really just enjoyed life, because I was always hanging on way too tight, so I think it’s time for me to listen to my inner Tyler Durden and “just let go”.

One thing that does makes me happy is writing. I love communicating and expressing my thoughts in written form, but I never really do enough of it, so I intend to change that, with this blog. I’ll use this space to share thoughts, ideas and whatever else is on my mind really, beyond the 140 character limitations of Twitter. I’ll still tweet regularly of course, as that medium is great for documenting thoughts, ideas and observations as they happen, but sometimes I’d like to expand upon things and just write freely. I don’t really know what’s in store for this blog, or for myself or anyone else in the year ahead, but hopefully it will be a pretty wild ride. Hands on the wheel? Uh uh, fuck that.