Loaded

by Christos Tsiolkas

  The West at night, as you drive over the Westgate Bridge, is a shimmering valley of lights. In the day, under the harsh glare of the sun, the valley reveals itself as an industrial quilt of wharfs, factories, warehouses, silos and power plants. And the endless stretch of suburban housing estates. The West is a dumping ground; a sewer of refugees, the migrants, the poor, the insane, the unskilled and the uneducated. There is a point in my city, underneath the Swanston Street Bridge where you can sit by the Yarra River and contemplate the chasm that separates this town. Look down the river towards the East and there are green parks rolling down to the river, beautiful Victorian bridges sparkle against the blue sky. Face West and there is the smoke-scarred embankment leading towards the wharfs. The beauty and the beast. All cities, all cities depend on this chasm. All cities, from Melbourne to Karachi, New York to Istanbul, Paris to Nairobi, include sewers for the international human refuse that keeps being churned out through war, famine, unemployment, poverty. The insane migrant will pack some bags and leave the shithole they were born in for the promise of better pay and a better life somewhere else.

  There is no America. There is no New World. There is no future available to the refo and the wog any more. Nowhere to run, like the song. They don’t need factories any more, they have elegantly-sculptured machines powered by microchips. They don’t need labour any more. Not now, now that they have the Internet. Nowhere to run, like the song. The sewers keep filling up, they are fucking overflowing and the refuse is choking up the atmosphere. From Singapore to Beijing, from Rio to Johannesburg.

  There is a last, and very cherished, urban myth. That every new generation has it better than the one that came before it. Bullshit. I am surfing on the down-curve of capital. The generations after this are not going to build on the peasants’ landholdings. There’s no jobs, no work, no factories, no wage packet, no half-acre block. There is no more land. I am sliding towards the sewer, I’m not even struggling against the flow. I can smell the pungent aroma of shit, but I’m still breathing.

  I watch Serena walk slowly towards the station. A Vietnamese family walk past me, the thin husband holding the hand of a chattering, smiling young girl. The woman walks a little behind, looking into the shop windows. I smile at them and the man returns a hesitant smile back to me. The woman refuses to acknowledge me. They walk past me, up the hill, disappearing in the glare of the sunlight. I watch them, fascinated. A long time ago I was a chattering child, walking with my family along this strip of road, walking up the hill. I’m thinking that in a few years those parents are going to want to kill that chattering child, are going to worry themselves sick over the chattering child. I’m thinking, Christ, Mum and Dad are going to kill me.

  My body is still pumped from the drugs. My head is hurting, a tiny pinprick of pain somewhere close to my forehead, a pain that pushes back onto my skull and affects my whole nervous system. My jaw is clenched. My cock feels heavy on my groin, bruised from the sex. I put one foot forward and begin a slow walk towards home. There is the sound of trams, cars, the familiar voices of shopowners, the familiar landscape in which I have spent all my life. I’m beginning to hate this city, hate its fucking familiarity. I want to go away, get out of here. I put on the headphones, press play and the music pushes my thoughts way back to some space in my head where I can’t hear them. In the voluptuous thunder and rhythms of the Walkman I disappear and I am out of here.

  I pass a couple of street kids on my way up the hill. One’s black, one’s white, one’s wog. They smell of solvents and petrol and are way out of it, eyes rolling to the back of their heads. I’ve never done glue; sniffed it once and it burnt my lungs. There is a generation coming after me that is fucking up faster than mine.

  The wog kid looks like Johnny. This makes me sad. Is there something I have to apologise to Johnny for? I can’t remember.

  Johnny tells me all the time, move out kid. He tells me that I’m a faggot and that I’m a faggot for life. Johnny warns me to not go overboard on the chemicals. Watch them kid, he says, they’ll dull the brain and they’ll dull the soul.

  Johnny has Toula. His dresses and skirts are also battle fatigues. He can’t remain silent. Silence would kill Johnny.

  The sun is very harsh and the hill seems neverending. One foot moves sluggishly after the other. I think of Johnny, think of him calling me gutless in one of his drunken rages. I fantasise that when I get home, I’ll yell at Mum and Dad that I am leaving, that I’ve found a man and I’m going to move in with him. I can feel myself smiling in the open street, dreaming of a little house by the sea with George and me in it. But I smell solvents and the fantasy evaporates under the hot sun’s glare. I’m so slow from the come-down that I couldn’t say a word to my parents. I couldn’t make a sound.

  I’m nearly home and maybe it is not glue on the street kids I’m smelling. Maybe I’m smelling the residue of chemicals on my own skin. Johnny tries to tell me things all the time, prepare me for the way the real world works. But I move too sluggishly to care about making it to the real world. Johnny is right but he has Toula.

  Drugs keep me quiet. And relatively content.

  Fast forward. Fast forward past birth, early childhood, school. Pause. Pause at being in church and looking up at Christ in the Panagia’s arms. A glance free of terror, or fear, free of adoration or love. Like looking at a schoolyard photo. Jesus could be any boy standing and smiling next to you. Off, pause.

  Fast forward to an old man, a drunk putting his hands between my legs. I enjoy it. Some cousin’s party, some uncle. Play. Not some uncle, it’s my father’s brother. He has a name. Theo Yianni. Rewind. Peeking through a half-open door. Watching my mother and father go for it, slamming hard into each other. Or rather my father slamming hard into my mother. Her arse high in the air. My hands on my dick. I’m shocked at how hairy her arse is.

  Fast forward, past Jesus, past the uncle with his hands down my pants. Weddings, engagements, parties, all the cousins sitting around swapping dirty jokes and gossip. The clock on the classroom wall. Watching it, waiting for the day to be over. Pause. An old woman across the street laughs at me. Her neighbours, three old toothless Greek grandmas laughing at me. She points at my crotch. I look down, my zip undone, a piece of my penis hanging out. I scream at them. Fucking cunts, fucking cunts, fucking cunts. They keep laughing and mother comes out and bashes me hard against the side of my head. I’m dragged screaming into the house.

  Fast forward. First joint, first party without the folks, first kiss, first jerk-off with a boy, first fail at school, first time getting drunk with Johnny.

  Press play. Peter and me share a bong. I promise not to tell Alex in case she tells our parents. She’s asleep in her room. I cough into the bong. Johnny is there and he laughs at me. Peter tells me he hates it at home, hates it. I don’t have to say anything, he knows I know. We have Joy Division’s Closer on the stereo. Pause. Johnny looks at Peter with what I thought then was adoration. Now I know it is a look of lust.

  Fast forward past movies. Sneaking into Caligula. Bragging about it at school. Watching porn, buying records, then buying CDs, first fuck with a girl. First time getting my arse fucked. First snort of speed, first acid, first hit of speed, first taste of smack. Pause. Motherfucker scary thought. Am I having safe sex? Play. Instructions. Watching a nervous young teacher demonstrate how to use a condom on a carrot. Everyone laughing, me included, sitting on my burning arse, wondering about the sperm gone up me, gone in me, gone through me.

  Fast forward through more instructions. This is how you fuck, this is how you drink, this is how you take drugs, this is how you treat a girl, this is how you recycle your garbage, this is how you save the planet, this is how you can make a difference. Pause. Play. We are the world. Play. Play that funky music white boy. Fast forward. Failing school, signing up for the dole, uncles, friends, aunts, neighbours telling you about some shit job going in some shit store in some shit street in some shit suburb. Play. Say no thanks. Dole office sends you
for an interview. Bald man, not looking at you, looking out the window, asks what you want to be. I say I don’t know. Asks why you want to work in his store, in his factory, in his office. I shrug my shoulders, don’t say the truth that I don’t want to work in his fucking store, his fucking factory, his fucking office. I say, don’t know. Interview lasts ten minutes. Go back to the dole office.

  Fast forward. Past Peter leaving home, past Dad getting drunk and chucking me out of home. Mum comes crying, finds me at my aunt watching cheapo Greek video. Cradles me and I’m embarrassed.

  Fast forward. Parties, getting pissed, getting high, getting stoned. Pause. Peter introduces me to Janet, to his housemate, George. Fast fucking forward. More parties, getting drunk, getting high, getting stoned. At some strange party, in some strange bedroom, George sucks me, I suck him. We don’t connect. I ain’t ever going to connect. Stop tape. Press record.

  There is no way out of this boring life unless you have lots of money. Unless you are born with lots of money it takes a lifetime to make lots of money. Hard work bores me. I ain’t no worker.

  I’m ruled by my cock. I see someone I think is attractive and I want to be with them, taste them, put my cock in their face or up their arse or through their cunt. I can’t imagine any of this ever changing. Marriage is out.

  I’m not Australian, I’m not Greek, I’m not anything. I’m not a worker, I’m not a student, I’m not an artist, I’m not a junkie, I’m not a conversationalist, I’m not an Australian, not a wog, not anything. I’m not left wing, right wing, centre, left of centre, right of Genghis Khan. I don’t vote, I don’t demonstrate, I don’t do charity.

  What I am is a runner. Running away from a thousand and one things that people say you have to be or should want to be. They’ll tell you God is dead but, man, they still want you to have a purpose. They’ll point to a child and say there it is, that’s purpose, that’s meaning. That’s bullshit. A child is a mass of cells and tissues and muscle that will grow up and will become Jack the Ripper or the president of the world. Maybe. More likely it will grow up and become a dole statistic. Worse, it will grow up and become an accountant. A child isn’t a purpose, a child isn’t meaning. A child is an accident that occurs when a piece of sperm bumps into an egg.

  They’ll point to someone working hard, point to my Mum or my Dad and say, look that’s purpose. Work hard, dignity of labour. They’ll point to two weak human beings who haven’t got the guts to walk away into a lonely happiness, who year after year stick out jobs they hate and a marriage they can’t breathe in for the sake of making some rich boss richer. They may have a house but the prick who owns the factories they work in has two houses, three houses, sixty fucking houses. There is no dignity without choice and there is no choice. I didn’t choose to be a runner.

  I like music, I like film. I’m going to have sex, listen to music and watch film for the rest of my life. I am here, living my life. I’m not going to fall in love, I’m not going to change a thing, no one will remember me when I’m dead. My epitaph; he slept, he ate, he fucked, he pissed, he shat. He ran to escape history. That’s his story.

  Press stop. Tape is terminated.

  Alex is drinking a coffee and flicking through a magazine when I get home. I sit down on the couch next to her and take a sip from her cup. She makes room for me and I take one of her cigarettes. Inner City’s Paradise is on the stereo. Where’s Mum and Dad? I ask. Gone to church. Yes, I shout with glee. By the time they are back I’ll be asleep in bed. I’ve saved myself a lecture. I go into the kitchen and grab an orange juice. You still speeding? Alex questions me.

  –Don’t know. I sit down next to her and ask her questions about how her night was.

  –Like shit. She throws me a dirty look. Charlie and I fought all night long. He thinks you hate him. I take a sip from my coffee. He’s a jerk, I tell her.

  –He thinks you were rude to him last night. I don’t answer. My sister can hitch herself up to some uptight Muslim bastard who will make her life misery, but that isn’t my concern. I’m not changing for Charlie. She pauses for a moment. His mum liked you, she thought you were a nice boy. I smile. I am, I say. Alex continues speaking, softly. I watch her as the words come out, her little girl face is marked with spots, her hair hangs limp. She hasn’t slept yet. We fucked last night, she tells me.

  –Bad move, I tell her. She nods. He thinks I’m not a virgin. You’re not, I reply. She starts laughing. I know, but he doesn’t. I told him I’ve used a vibrator. I look at her in amazement. You didn’t? I ask her, and she continues laughing. Stops, and with a smirk on her face says, I did tell him, I said it was one of yours. For a moment I look at my sister and she looks very young, and very frail, a small hurt animal floating on the couch, and then I look at her grinning at me and I start laughing with her. What did he say?

  –He said it was disgusting but I think it excited him. He’ll be after your arse next. I finish the cigarette and go up to the stereo. I work the CD select so I can hear Big Fun. The song comes on and I sway to it, not looking at my sister. I turn around. Stay away from wog boys, kiddo, I tell her, they’ll fuck you up.

  Hey Ari, what am I going to do? I love the bastard. She moves off the couch and grabs my hand.

  –Alex, I say to her, I’m tired. Can we talk about this later? She lets go of my hand, gives me a weird look and wipes a tear from her eyes. Like you care, she whispers to me. Then she begins shouting. I hate fucking. Arabs she screams. I move towards my bedroom. She’s still screaming. I hate fucking wogs. Fucking Greeks and Italians. I hate fucking Australians and the fucking English. The fucking Chinese and the fucking Vietnamese. Fucking Africans, fucking Indians, fucking Aborigines. I hate them all she screams down the corridor. She slams the door to her bedroom.

  My head is spinning. I’m still drug-fucked. Out of it. Stoned. High. Ripped. Pissed. Tripping. Loaded. I want to go to Alex and tell her that I may be in love. That I think I’m going to be a faggot for the rest of my life. That I’m exhausted and want her to hold me. My head begins to spin more and I wonder if Alex has any drugs to smoke.

  I get into bed and lie there for five minutes, ten minutes, half-an-hour looking at the ceiling. It’s not like I’m thinking. No thought goes through my head. I look at the walls and the ceiling. My hands are playing with my balls. I’m not even thinking about sex, not thinking about anyone or anything. I’m just looking at the ceiling.