I can't help it, the road keeps on rolling out behind me.

I'm out... the household was not disolved so much as dismembered. We killed it!


Riding on the back of a week of sleepless nights with three days to go and Mark has disappeared leaving all his stuff behind. It's 3am after a day of caffiene, codeine and ginko bilaboa... four angry texts messages and a half a bottle of wine later with no sleep in sight and the door explodes unleasing an amphetamine crazy on my insomiac drunk...

...Footsteps...
...CRASH...
...The sound of cheap pressed wood furniture being dragged over the floorboards...
...silence...
...and then sound of something else imploding, falling to the floor and starting a chain reaction that echoes though the house in wave after wave.


I hear Mark swearing, it's three hours till my alarm is set to go off. I crawl out of bed and stumble to my bedroom door. Even with the whole world out of focus and spinning I can see the sizzle in Mark's skin. His eyes are cruel little points, pin prick pupils, his sockets rimmed red raw... bullet holes.

ME: "Mark man, what the fuck are you doing?"
MARK: "Just what you fucking asked me to, it's all going... NOW!!!"

This is psychological warfare! I retreat into my room defenseless, plug myslf into my discman and pull the covers up over my head to wait out the offensive. My alarm goes off and the army of noise retreats into the rising sun.


Fast forward through a seemingly endless gas cloud of bleach. Hours spent with mop and bucket in hand or waltzing through slow motion work days. My home is being reduced, becoming 0, the last twelve months of my life are being sterilised; erased. My whole world is a stack of cardboard boxes in the corner again.


The clock ticks... thirty six hours and I will have no fixed address. I'm on the verge of another migraine when the phone rings. It's a travelling salesman from Warburton who needs someone to live in his house to safeguard his property whilst he is on the road. En route to Warburton in a rented van sucking on my fifth bottle of Redbull I pass the caravan park which marks my only other alternative and realise that I have already accepted his generous offer.


And then there is only five hours left and counting, Mark and I are sitting on the back porch together for the last time smoking and he turns to me and says:

MARK:"You know these have been some of the best times ever. Completely fucked up but fucking good" and as he says it I remember...


Gav, Mark and I drunk on homebrew throwing lit cherry bombs at wild rabbits in our backyard giggling like braindead stoners. I think about the time spent babysitting Gav's kids, malnutritioned and flithy after Bec told them she never wanted them, never loved them. I can almost feel the warm glow, that sense of being home like I felt on the many Saturday nights the three of us spent sharing pasta, drinking premium whisky none of us could afford and sampling Gav's painkiller smorgasboard accumulated over five years of being on workers compensation for chronic back pain. All the bad horror movies and joint roaches... the way someone was always home when you had a problem and needed to talk. It was a house where there was always tea on the shelf, beer in the fridge and a fresh mix in the bowl on the living room table.


Being here now after the fact sitting in some franchise coffee shop in the neighbourhood I grew up in and thinking about everything... knowing I'll be in L.A. in less than a week a smile spreads over my lips and for a brief second, just for a moment I'm actually glad that I'm the one who get's to be me... anyone else would just get it all wrong.

The place where everbody knows your name.

I walked into the fruit shop in town to get boxes in preparation for my moving house, the man behind the counter had a huge beer gut and a beard down to his belt buckle, it was an unusual beard as the hair that grew of his chin was shaved clean, leaving these huge mutant mutton chops to crawl off his head (and almost down his pants!).


I had never seen this man before in my life...

ME: Hi do you have any empty boxes? I'm moving house.
MAN: Yeah... just a minute aren't you the guy that walks down Fernhill road every night at six?
ME: Yes, that's when I go for my walk.
MAN: I see you every night whilst I am watching the telly eating my dinner, I thought I knew you from somewhere.
ME: Oh.
MAN: So I guess I won't be seeing you anymore soon. Where are you moving to?
ME: Um... Warburton, eventually.
MAN: Oh, well good luck.


He handed me the boxes and I left.


You know some days it seems like the small world experience just keeps on getting smaller and smaller.

Analgesic calm

I am a teenage werewolf... prowling the streets looking for life. An experiment in cause and effect... as I move up the hill the curtains of a hundred front rooms swing open for a split second, prying eyes glint and then fade away as the curtains fall back into place... call it voyeurism, call it community mindedness... call it whatever you want, maybe I'm just paranoid. The rhythm of blood thumping in my temples... I cannot medicate myself heavily enough to force the pain into a background hum... turn the corner to the bus stop and there is a man there... long scraggly goatee, tattooed from his knuckles to his shoulders, can of bourbon in hand, arms like tree trunks, mirror shades... is he looking at me?

ME: "Yeah, what do you want mate?"
I here it come out of my mouth and I have no idea what I am doing, it's automatic... this is how you get yourself killed... he looks confused "Did you say something buddy?" I know they're my words but I feel like someone else is driving... this guy could snap me in half...

MAN: No mate, your right... I'm just standing here, waiting.
He's backing down like I am the threat... this is the power of illogic, this is the magic of the migraine and then...


I am on the bus, and then...


Chirnside Park, the consumer equivalent of a cancer ward; painted in beige and pastel pink and all wrapped up in the diffuse glow of weak lighting... everywhere you look your surroundings say: DON'T PANIC, EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY... now that you are here.


I am anything but okay!


I am a ghost, weak at the knees from a headache that had been crippling me for days. It feels like invisible hands twisting an ice pick into my back pushing up between my shoulder blades. Dry heaving, I force a grey oval shaped pill down with the coffee dregs from my styrofoam cup. It is Friday, just before closing time and I don't know why I am here... it happens... sometimes the pain gets so bad that you'll do anything just to keep going. It's that feeling, like if you sit down you may never get up again... ever. To stop is death, to stop is to let the pain in and go under. This is the momentum which carried me out into the street and onto the bus to here... everywhere around me the world is saying: BE CALM, RELAX.


I am moving as quick as I can, the knot in my stomach tightening... I can feel the metallic cool of too much saliva flooding my mouth. I feel light headed and dizzy and I am scared that I will be sick here in front of all these people. I am looking for something to focus on, searching for something to grab my attention but around me all I see is neutral calm plastered to the walls. Even the store front neon seems to have been toned down to suit the mood. Everyone I pass is mid-forties, saddled with toddlers and stuffed into cotton print leggings and and over an sized t-shirt.


I am trying to shake the image of myself flat on my back where I stand spitting up vomit all over the Pine Fresh floors. Messing up the placid off-white swirl of the tiling with splashes of bile yellow and the murk of undigested coffee. I tuck my thumbs up into my closed fists and center myself around the pain as I sqeeze, I feel my joints pop and I keep going. I'm trying to block out the anti-depressant calm of the place but I can feel the weight of my surroundings falling in on me.


...I can't breathe... I feel like I am fading, like the Tardis, a damaged dimensional travel vessel with no control over where it ends up... and my mind is taking me back to the days of the first headaches...


The pattern had always been the same, I am fine but I can feel the pressure building up and then it explodes... white hot sparks... pain... like the aftershock of fireworks burning into the retina for days, weeks, months... they come in clusters, nothing for ages and then... I was nine when I remember going to the doctor, a nasty little man; lean and stoic, unsympathetic, he asked me a bunch of questions, took some scrapings to test for allergies, drew blood and sent me away... I was always a nervous child, I didn't know how to interact, when I was in my first year at primary school I remember needing to go to the toilet. It was just after afternoon playtime and I was so embarrassed and uncomfortable, I decided it would be best if I just ignored it. I wanted to be invisible... we went back and the doctor said he didn't know what was wrong.


I have never been able to relate to people well on their terms, they talk to me and me head goes warp speed trying to figure out how I am supposed to react, I et so caught up in notions of appropriateness that I forget to listen. It used to be that I never spoke, I'd just stand there trying to look thoughtful and wait for them to let me go... that was until I discovered that if I did all the talking, I would never have to relate to people on their terms, the more noise I made the more control I would have over the situation.


I am back in that classroom trying to concentrate on my comprehension sheet but the pain in my bladder is so bad, that I can feel the nerves in the ends of my toes tingling in sympathetic complaint with my bursting bladder. It hurts so badly I as though I am going to start crying but the feeling shocks me into my original embarrassment and can feel my cheeks start to burn red... the family doctor wanted to be a championship cyclist but he didn't have what it took. His resentment was expressed in his lack of concern for his patients, he had two methods of showing how little he care: if nothing was wrong he'd prescribed whatever you wanted without checking you over to see if it was appropriate, or if you were in genuine pain he'd refuse to let you have anything, he'd tell you you were fine all you needed to do was get back to things to take your mind off whatever it was you'd come to see him about.


Every muscle in my body crying out, I'm standing behind my chair, waiting to be dismissed at the end of the day, waiting for the bell. I don't think I have ever experienced pain, like the pain of my straining bladder and the illogical fear of admitting anything was happening, my skin crawling with phantom tingles, a sharp stabbing radiated in quick pulses from the pit of my stomach causing my body to jerk visibly. The bell is seconds away but the time stretches like an eternity of desert between my pain and the toilet... the night before our third visit to the doctor I'd started vomiting uncontrollably at the dinner table, the world had greyed out, everything around me felt like the the low hum of an air-conditioner fading out against the noise of the headache, this was before I learned how to control it, before I knew how to focus. The doctor had no idea what to do, he prodded me here, poked me there, tapped my knees with a rubber mallet, took my pulse, my blood pressure and stood there hands on hips looking defeated.


I am nine years old, standing behind my chair in class with urine streaming down my leg in torrents. My light blue shorts turning black, saturated.

Hey creative genius... your shoe's untied.

NOTE TO SELF:

Now it's true that I am a frustrated artist destined to waste away teaching media to a bunch of teenagers who are not the least bit interested till I grow old and grey but that doesn't mean I can get inappropriately creative.


Tonight whilst trying to edit a video of the year's school sports highlights for presentation evening I got a bit carried away and attempted to use a Melvins song as the soundtrack... it felt very wrong, all dark and evil and shit and I couldn't get it to go with the pictures right no matter how I tried.


That's when I realised... there is no place for doom metal in high school, not anywhere, it's just not appropriate.

Weather board refugees.

I go to bed, Mark comes home, I get up, Mark goes to bed or so it has gone on for almost two weeks. I come home from work and the only light bulb left in the house is in my room, the rest have gone to some mysterious place.


ME: I had to buy all new light bulbs yesterday, what happened?
MARK: Um.. I had an accident (going bright red) I'll get a bunch of spares and um... (trails off)


We had a talk yesterday Mark and I...


MARK: I guess you've noticed that I've been all fucked up lately. Nocturnal, I don't know what to do anymore, I'm back on the gear... too much gear.


The art of keepin' on truckin', it's a balancing act... I take the psuedoephedrine to get things done so I need to take the loratadine to put myself down at night, which only means I need to take more psuedoephedrine to get going again and pretty soon my health is such a mess I am on a steady dose to codeine for the headaches and vitamin supplements to keep my immune system from collapsing... we are not that different Mark and I.


MARK: Megan really fucked me up man, the way she came back into my life only so that she could leave for Canada and destroy me all over again. It's been hurting so bad, I was on the train yesterday coming home from work and I broke down. I just started crying so hard I hyperventilated and the security guy thought I was some crazy and almost herded me off the train, I was heaving so hard I couldn't even explain myself.


The problem with gutter drugs are that once you understand how the system works you can get on anywhere. Some pills you've got to avoid because they are cut with things to make you sick if you dose up excessively and some pills are dangerous because they are chock full of aspirin or paracetamol which you can't extract. There is also the issue of finding the right pharmacies, some of them make you sign off against your drivers license which get's logged into some central database to keep tabs on how often or how much you buy, this is usually the bigger chain stores. The stores that are too small and under-staffed to follow procedure during rush periods are good but unpredictable, unlike the pharmaceutical bulk buy warehouses, department store for over the counter medicine staffed by teenagers who don't know and couldn't care less. Consumer information websites will usually tell you what unlisted ingredients go into the manufacture of the different pills, a pharmacist can tell you the generic equivalent of any big name drug and any place you visit that asks to see your license should be visited no more than once every six months.


MARK: Dude, I'm really sorry about the lights, I smashed the bulbs to cook my gear so I could smoke it... I've been so spun I completely forgot to got new bulbs. I'm so sorry you got dragged into this shit. I feel like a total fuck up, all the pot just makes me so lethargic I start to fucking hate myself, but I only started this because I couldn't deal with shit... and the speed, it's like a holiday from sitting around so fucking dead I can't even think. Now I've got two habits I can't control and I'm scared I can't deal with that either.


We are the white niggers of suburbia... the displaced weather board refugees who move from cheap rental to cheap rental, we get stuck in one another's gravitational pull for a while, sharing a house and at that point in time everything is shared, rent, bills, furniture, habits, troubles, neuroses. Our households, our lives are unstable ecosystems... environments on the verge of collapse... the threat of displacement ever present. I have moved four times in the last two years with a block mounted poster of Michael J. Fox ('Family Ties' era), a growing collection of trash cinema and a medicine bag that looks innocent to everyone but keeps me going, keeps me moving forward and focused whilst screening out reality just enough so that it doesn't really matter.


MARK: I swear to God, if I lose this job I'm going back to Adelaide... even though there's more trouble waiting for me there. If I lose this job I don't know what I am going to do, I'm such a screw-up!


A girl named Kath stayed with us for a while, Mark met her in Falls Creek, where she had been working and living for the past two years. She came to us because she wanted a place to stay so she could look for a job and find a place in the city. She found a job at the Vic Market and moved to East Melbourne with three gay men, all of whom had monster drug habits. There she was a country girl (born in Albury), a self professed homophobe who was trying to leave drugs in her past living with three gay drug addicts. She lasted six days, six days during which she was so wired on whatever they were giving her to snort that she didn't sleep, so fucked up that she couldn't leave the house to start her job. Finally her mind and her wallet buckled under the strain and she found herself back in Albury... another success story.


In three weeks we leave this house and all of this will cease to be of any importance... nothing more than a funny anecdote I can tell at parties when the conversation wanes and I've had too much to drink to know better. I am going to L.A. and then I am moving into a caravan park to plan my next move... I have not stopped moving since I was 21, I have eroded many friendships to dust, I have not had a girlfriend in almost two years and I have lived with so many freaks, geeks, burnouts, slackers, psychos and head-fucks that I can't even be sure if I am the normal one anymore.