Just after Easter II, I was sitting on the side of the road in Katoomba in the early hours of the morning, not really knowing where to go, and this group of people came past and handed me a few dollars in change. I thanked them, and told them I would get a coffee. It was just a really nice thing to do. I recounted the story to Silk’s parents, I told them that having a limp makes begging easier, like the beggar in ‘The Life of Brian.’ I was limping for months after Easter II. When I went to Silk’s parents after Easter II, his father gave me an old warm jumper. It was such a simple gesture, but it meant so much to me, it was the nicest thing anyone had done for me for a long time. Simple acts of kindness really mean a lot when you’re down and out.
I ended up turning up on this guy Pete’s doorstep in Katoomba. Silk used to live with him once, nice guy, and he said I could stay. I was only there a few nights then there was a knock at the door. It was mum and Sally, I looked at mum with anger in my eyes, I tried to keep my mouth shut, but I was so mad I couldn’t and I blurted out “I know about you.” I proceeded to rattle off a list of problems she gave me, and I told her I knew about the people she killed. She acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about, but “I knew she knew.” Then she left, and I started to panic.
“Sally knew too much!” Panic set in, “mum would have to get rid of her, and fast, before Sally starts telling people about what mum had done!” I was racing around all over the place, I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t have much time to do it. Suddenly (I believed) I worked out where mum kept the poison, in the hallway there was a cupboard filled with old medicines no one has ever used, for conditions no one has ever had, “they weren’t medicines, that was the poison cupboard! Powders, potions, poisons, she really was a witch!”
I went to Silk’s place, to tell him and his parents about my great victory, that I had discovered where she kept the poison! They didn’t believe me, and I got angry and left. I ended up going to the Police Station in Katoomba to tell them about my mum. Without saying anything they just led me out the back and into a holding cell, they call it “the fishbowl.” I was in the holding cell banging on the perspex and shouting “I hate people! I just want to go where there’s no people! Let me go where there’s no people!” Then they put me in the back of a police car and drove me down to Nepean Hospital. I started to relax, this is what I needed, a roof over my head, a free feed, and some time to regroup and reorganize.
This is what it took and the sacrifices I made to discover The Stage. Many times I thought about drowning myself, about filling my pockets with rocks and jumping into Blue Pool, just like the swagman from ‘Waltzing Matilda.’ I survived discovering The Stage, but only just. Had I not believed my mother was poisoning people, I never would have gone to the Police, and I probably would have died out there in the bush. I wanted to die out there, I wanted to fall asleep and never wake up. It was my spiritual home, but I had to keep going for the sake of the human race, and to make sure that my mother faced justice. Even though my God had abandoned me, even though He left me to die out there, I could never truly give up. It was not in my nature to give up.
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by the billabong,
You’ll come a waltzing matilda with me.
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Chapter 5
“It’s no use to reason with me now, I must die.
Since I have done ‘Eureka’ I can achieve nothing more.”
(Edgar Allan Poe)
All there was to do in the psyche ward was smoke cigarettes, and because I didn’t have to pay for food or accommodation, I was the cigarette man. I had two kinds of rollies, packs of tailors, and small and large cigars to choose from. I would sit in the courtyard and think, “what do I feel like smoking next?”
The highlights of my day each day were meal times, there was nothing else to do in there, so I would stuff myself silly at meal times. I’d start the day with two helpings of the hot breakfast, followed by four bowls of cereal. At lunch and dinner times I would eat two servings of the hot meals again, and about four sandwiches. I put on quite a bit of weight in the hospital, but there was just nothing else that brought any pleasure to me in there, apart from smoking of course, and having ridiculously long showers several times a day knowing that the hot water wouldn’t run out. The highlight of my week each week were the music videos on the weekend mornings. Britney Spears was in the charts for ‘My Prerogative’ at the time, and every week when that video came on the TV my heart would flutter and I’d dream of the time when I would be with her.
At my first magistrate hearing, the doctor was telling the magistrate reasons why he should keep me in there. I was laughing and saying “go ahead, keep me as long as you want! I’ve got free food, free accommodation, I don’t give a shit!” That feeling didn’t last.
They had me on my old drug, Seroquel. Before being in the hospital I used to take 300mg at night, but between the time that I took it and the time that I got to sleep I would get really paranoid and depressed. The paranoia and depression could be pretty intense at times, but it didn’t last because that stuff would knock me right out. Apparently that drug is often used as a date rape drug, it’s pretty sedating stuff, so I would tolerate it knowing that soon I would be asleep.
In the hospital they started me on a low dosage, but they just kept increasing it every day. By the end they had me on the maximum dosage, 1000mg at night and 500mg in the morning. It was horrible, it was psychological torture. Not only was the dosage huge at night, but in the morning, after I’d just woken up and can’t get straight back to sleep, they were giving me 500mg of the shit and forcing me to stay awake through the intense paranoia and depression. Every day when I went to get my medication I would beg them to stop it, I would plead with them about how it makes me feel, but they completely ignored my pleas. They treat you like an infant, like you don’t know anything. I’ve got a friend whose brother died from being overmedicated in a psyche ward, he tried to tell them too, but they didn’t listen to him either. These are the standard abuses of human rights and human dignity that occur every day in the hospital. I’ve always told myself that if I can ever afford it I’m launching a class action against the government for false imprisonment and psychological torture. Probably not really, I don’t believe in litigation, but were they ever to take me to court for something, I’d start the biggest fucking class action against human rights abuses the government has ever seen. They treat you as subhuman, and the psyche wards aren’t for getting you well, they’re for sweeping you under the carpet so that you don’t mix with the rest of society.
I remembered what my old friend told me the first time I was in the hospital, about knowing when to hold them and when to fold them, and I kept quiet about The Stage, and I kept quiet about the no knowledge of good & evil thing. I did tell them about my mother, at the time I thought that5 this was a perfectly rational thought. There was a whiteboard in the TV room, and I used to write about all the things my mum did, about all the evidence pointing to her being a murderer. When that didn’t work, I started writing about my theories, I wrote all about time and gravity and the infinite Universe. Each day I would write more and more stuff on that whiteboard, and each day they would rub it off. This continued for about a week or so, until one day they took away the markers.
One of the hardest things about being back on drugs was that The Stage was disappearing from my perception. When I arrived I could see the world through the eyes of God, it was hilarious, everything was a big joke, but soon my perception of The Stage began to fade. I struggled to keep seeing The Stage. I still knew about The Stage, I still knew it was there, but I was no longer feeling it, I couldn't actually see it anymore. That was when things got tougher and I got depressed, because life wasn’t such a joke anymore. I was beginning to take life too seriously, like the rest of the human race, and I wasn’t happy with my situation.
They kept me in the hospital over Christmas that year, everyone else got to leave except for me,
and maybe one or two of the real freaks. I hated them for that. Then when I saw the Boxing Day Tsunamis on TV, I couldn’t believe it. I remembered a passage from the Bible “Just as in the days of Noah… the people knew nothing until the floods came and swept them all away, so it will be at the coming of the son of man.” “This is it,” I thought, “Judgement Day!”
I was working on bringing on Judgement Day, but the Boxing Day Tsunamis told me that I had been thinking too small. I’d been talking about freak accidents and a meteor shower and stuff, when really this isn’t about a few accidents, this is about worldwide devastation. So I lifted my game a little, and I started planning bigger disasters for Judgement Day, as far as I was concerned Judgement Day had just started. That’s what I thought the Boxing Day Tsunamis were, the beginning of Judgement Day. Of course I was wrong. I spent years afterwards working on different Judgement Day Scripts, in the end I settled on a three day event, Freak Accident Friday, Supernova Saturday and Floody Sunday. The idea was that the world would surrender before the final day, when an asteroid would smash into the ocean, and because the world surrendered the asteroid would never come. Just as the Boxing Day Tsunamis happened on the day after Christmas, and in 2011 the Japanese Tsunami happened on the day after my birthday, I believed that both of these were precursors to my Judgement Day Tsunami. My Judgement Day never eventuated, it was like I said, you can't sit around waiting for a miracle to save you. I should have taken my own advice, and as the years have passed by, I've learned to let go.
Anyway, one day this new girl came into the psyche ward, her name was Kristy, and she was straight onto me. It was great having the attention of a woman, even though she was crazy. Kristy was only in the hospital for a week, maybe two. Kristy knew when to hold them and when to fold them. I soon found out she was crazier than me, but she never said a word to the hospital staff.
My sister Katie came over from America while I was in the hospital to get married to this guy, Tim. They had a ceremony in both countries, I couldn’t go because of my mum of course. I would have made such a scene.
I had other relatives visit me in the hospital. I had relatives come over from Perth and visit me, I don’t know why they had to come and see me in a place like that, but worse was that I had distant relatives come all the way from England and visit me in the hospital. For fuck’s sake, I’ve seen them twice in my life and once was in a psyche ward, do you know what I mean?
At my last magistrates hearing, I had been in the hospital for about two months now, the magistrate told the psychiatrist that unless he could think of a good reason why I needed to stay in the hospital any longer he would extend my stay for two more weeks and that’s it. Finally, I was getting out!
Kristy said I could move in with her, although we’d had fights a few times because she would go nuts over nothing and she would change her mind, but at the time of me leaving the hospital, I was moving in with her.
When I first moved in with Kristy I didn’t understand her. One moment she would be really nice and fun, and the next she would turn. Because I didn’t understand her personality I thought she must be a spy, working for some government that wants to keep an eye on me. I saw her putting plastic screws into the walls, I thought they were little spy cameras, when she wasn’t around I would look closely at them trying to see the cameras.
Soon I began to understand though, if I had no knowledge of good & evil, Kristy was my opposite. Kristy was the most insanely jealous woman you’ve ever met. I couldn’t talk to or even look in the direction of another woman without Kristy calling her a prostitute and getting angry with me. I would walk around town with my eyes focused on the ground, bumping into things, trying desperately not to look at anyone female.
In the hospital, you are beaten into submission. We call it “the psyche ward” because they try to psyche you out and make you think you’re crazy. When I got there my spirits were high, nothing could bring me down, but it didn’t last. They beat me down, they took away my spirit. You do what you’re told to do in the psyche ward, and you keep your mouth shut. If you open your mouth, or if you try to defy them in any way, they give you more drugs, until you learn how to keep your mouth shut and your eyes downcast. So when I left the hospital and moved in with Kristy, I had already been beaten into submission, Kristy just kept me in this state.
Our relationship, it was horrible, I was completely submissive to her, and every two weeks I would get kicked out after we ran out of money and she got the shits. Except this wouldn’t even be her excuse, she would accuse me of “spiritually cheating,” or “spiritually having an affair with the neighbour.” I still don’t even know what this means, except maybe that I was fantasising about someone else, I didn’t even know who the neighbour was, I’d never even seen this neighbour that I was supposed to be “spiritually cheating” with. I always went to sleep after her, if I went to sleep before her I would get a slap in the face, and her telling me I was spiritually cheating.
I tried to get more money for us, technically I still had my casual job at Coles, so I rang them up and went in for a shift at work. When I got home Kristy told me she’d been raped, that someone followed her home and raped her in the kitchen. I knew it was bullshit, that she was just angry about me being at work and not by her side like I always was, but we went to the police anyway. The police could tell it was bullshit too, and after sitting with them for a while they let us go home. Months later Kristy confessed to me, she told me she was “spiritually raped,” she told me she was in the kitchen and she felt herself being bent over the stove and “spiritually raped.” Fucking ridiculous, I just wasn’t able to leave her sight, except to walk over to the shops and get a handful of chocolate liquorice logs for her, even then the first thing she’d ask when I got back five minutes later was “did you cheat?”
Kristy started smoking pot, which in a way was good, because when she smoked pot she was peaceful, she was quiet, I think the voices in her head stopped. But when she ran out, that was when I would get kicked out again. When I got kicked out I would either go camping, or go and stay at my grandparent’s place in the caravan around the side of the house. Pretty soon Kristy would call me, begging me to come back, and I would consider my options, either have nowhere to live or go back to Kristy. I also felt bad, I’ve never been very good at breaking up with women, because I don’t like hurting people’s feelings, and if she rang me up crying I would come back.
Even though Kristy smoked pot all the time, it wasn’t often I would smoke it. When I did smoke pot I would change personalities and, because I was in such a horrible place in my life, I would feel broken and defeated, but no less powerful than before. I would just feel lost, like I didn’t know what to do next, and I’d be confused about who I am. I would tell Kristy how powerful I am and she’d just smile a stoned smile.
When we took speed it was always a bit intense. We would be up all night and Kristy would have me rearranging the furniture in the flat (at fucking 3am!). One morning after being on speed all night was particularly horrible. It was about midday the next day, we’d been up all night and I broke the cardinal rule, I tried to go to sleep before her. I was laying on the lounge with my eyes closed and I woke to the sound of a plate smashing on the concrete wall just above my head, she’d thrown it from across the room. Then she grabbed a lamp, smashed the light globe and came charging towards me in an attempt to electrocute me. Luckily as she moved across the room with the lamp in hand, the plug came out of the power point. I told a social worker at the community health centre about it and everything else that had been going on, she told me I was in a domestic violent relationship, which made sense to me, but I didn’t know that men could be the victims of domestic violence.
Ecstasy was much more fun. Ecstasy had an unusual effect on me, it seemed to clear up my mind. It was like there was a thick cloud of fog in my mind. My mind still is like that a little, but when I took ecstasy it was like the fog lifted, I kept saying “I feel normal, this is weird.” I really d
o believe that the antipsychotic effects of ecstasy should be further investigated, the clarity of mind I felt on ecstasy was amazing.
I got Kristy pregnant one night while we were on ecstasy. Probably a couple of weeks later Kristy was waking up in the morning and throwing up, it was horrible. I stood there helpless, not knowing what to do. I knew she was pregnant and I was scared, she took a pregnancy test and it was confirmed. I did this to her, I couldn’t escape the guilt, I did this. We talked about whether we were going to have the baby. We were going to have it, even though I knew I couldn’t handle it, and I knew I didn’t want it, but I didn’t want to tell Kristy what to do. Then Kristy finally made her decision and she had an abortion. It was horrible, I could have talked her out of it if I wanted to, but I didn’t want a child with her. I spent a lot of time trying to work out whether having an abortion was evil or not, but I didn’t know, and we went to the abortion clinic.
While we were at the clinic I saw the name of the doctor on the statement, Dr J Burgess. In Team Tron we used to call each other “Burgess” when someone was pissed off. It came from “Baby” John Burgess. When he hosted ‘Catch Phrase,’ and someone would give a stupid answer, he would pull this face and do a fake laugh, but you could tell how pissed off he really was with the stupid answer. When I saw the name of the doctor, J Burgess, I knew that God was pissed off with me. That was the last message I received from God for years. He stopped speaking to me for a long time after that, it took a long time before He called me back. When I look back on it now, I that know the abortion is the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life, but at least I know where God stands on the issue. I can’t tell people not to have abortions, but I can tell people not to take the decision lightly. God can forgive you like He forgave me, but He will be pissed off.
Judgement Day Page 9