by Vanya Vetto
Fucked if I was going to waste cash on a taxi.
It was just a little twist.
I was on my way to the pool.
The sun was out.
I couldn't deal with ray overloads.
Back to the room.
Angel was showing Emmy her new clothes.
Angel is an Iban ladyboy and Emmy an Indonesian cleaner.
I joked some.
Nice clothes. Even Emmy was eyeing them off.
Angel is a real swell girl.
She's decent and professional and has the perfect grace of a receptionist.
She also doubles up as a cleaner.
The hotel I'm staying at is a shag short time hotel.
Terry is her gay friend.
I have nothing against their gender.
I bitched to Angel about Emmy, the other Iban receptionist.
Angel was totally sympathetic and almost embarrassed that another Iban could act so arrogant.
I put the words out in the right channel for Emmy to reform.
She's sweet as apple pie these days.
She's in her forties and really means well. She just likes to show off in front of Iban guests but to her own detriment.
'I'll block you from checking in tomorrow,' she said, after accusing me of talking too much.
It's really not hospitality material, I told Andy and Joseph, the two Malay receptionists. And they forwarded the complaint.
I only want her to be better I said.
I deferred from complaining directly to Cindy the manager.
She hates Najib and knows I'm a fan of him. So if I complained, I feared she would actually not let me check in another night.
That's what Emmy the receptionist was banking on.
As I said, just a little twist.
The knee didn't swell but it kicked up a storm.
There was a wild Bronco bucking and carrying on inside my knee.
It had me in a funk.
Where was the morphine?
I found a piss bucket. It leaked.
I'm no stranger to pain.
Steve Cartwright was playing support unit.
'I play with pain levels,' he said.
So was I. I was doing test runs up and down the stairs.
Pain came, pain went. Steve kept on sending funny and encouraging tweets.
The next morning I'm expecting the worst.
I can walk. That jarring pinched pain has gone.
What the fuck?
This is miracle material.
I'm going to either a mosque, temple or church and I'm getting down on my wobbly knees and paying my respect to my maker.
In the depths of my pain, I promised my god I'd not annoy anyone.
It's something I'm seriously considering.
Thoughts of how will get up and down the stairs.
Test runs and lots of upper body strength, that's how.
I had another hotel marked out which had rooms on the ground floor.
How would I get on the plane?
How would I go to the toilet?
I was already using a bucket. It leaked. So I grabbed the cleaner's bucket. Need to return it, hopefully without an explanation.
'Was just mopping my room,' I'd tell them. And I was, I was mopping up the piss from the leaking bucket.
The pain was shocking.
Keep the leg straight, don't twist it, I knew the drill, I had been there and done that before.
'Just kick that tree down,' said the guardian spirit of the land, who died a ghastly death at the hands of the white fellow.
I'm going to get hurt. It's going to fuck up my knee again if I'm not careful.
The urgency of doing the dirty deed had me in a funk.
I should have went slowly and surely and leisurely.
Instead I went like a bat out of hell.
I was under the spell of the land which was looking for another victim. It was goading me. Kick kick.
More it said.
One last kick, said the spirit of the land, you can do it, it goaded.
The tree did eventually break but not with out me buckling my knee and taking a fall hard on my back.
I'll never enter that hell territory again.
Backs and knees in despair, never known a place to be cursed with the pox.
I remembered the rotten kangaroo carcass.
The land wanted me, the bugs wanted me, the worms wanted me, the evil spirits wanted me.
If I had it my way, they weren't going to get me.
Why don't you kick that fucking tree down?
It was the thing lurking around the lands, the grim reaper, a soulless creature of the netherworld. The impertinence of it.
The tree was happy, it didn't want to be kicked down.
Nightmares long behind me.
I can walk.
The knee didn't make me scream as I got off the bed.
I can't figure this out.
I was thinking the worse, amputation.
Wheelchairs, crutches.
I was scared.
I feel so vulnerable not being about to walk away from trouble.
Trouble loves praying on vulnerabilities.
Fuck, this knee ain't ever going to be the same again.
I was bending my knees. No aches and pains. I've been cured. Even in my dreams, I'm bemoaning a dodgy knee.
Wake up.
I'm cured of last night's affliction. And this isn't a dream.
The pain has gone. I can walk. I'm not going for a run but so far so good. And nor am I going to do deadlifts.
The dreams are still alive.
Borneo is still calling me.
It listened to my screams in the night and replied, 'do take courage child, it can be delightful.'
A test run downstairs.
Emmy isn't feeling well, she's under the spell of lethargy and the other Emmy, the cleaner, has aches and pains and borrows my Tiger Balm.
Steady steady.
Now back up. I can feel the knee, and the suspect joints, but it's doing just fine.
Nothing pops.
Back in my room, time for some food.
It only cost me one dollar in my currency. You can't even buy one cancer stick for that back in inflation land.
I'm feeling better already.
Fish, pumpkin, curry gravy and rice.
And tax-free cigarettes.
I light up, puff...
...the world has come good again.
The old Chinese lady using a four-pronged walking stick as bent as her bow legs thought the same as she made her way to my local.
I wasn't alone in this affliction thingy.
If ever there was a time for a collective sigh, it was now.
I took the back stairs.
Thinking the spiral stairs would be better than the normal ones at the front, I hobbled down them.
I gently suggested to Emmy to clean my room. It's been three days now.
'Besok,' she says. That's what she said yesterday.
Man, those smells are building up.
At this rate, if Emmy doesn't put some chemicals in my room, the health department is sure to close down the joint.
'It stinks of piss.'
All the more reason for you to get your sweet Indonesian ass in my room and start cleaning like you really mean it, I said with a smile.
She didn't understand a word I said, though.
I was aiming for the 24-hour Indian joint.
They serve great Tee Tarek, or pulled milky tea and I needed a break from the breakneck speed of 'making money' of the Chinese tea houses.
I might even write up a piece, I thought, over a rotti, a milk tea, and some curry to mop up the Indian style pancake that is fluffy in a pastry way.
I'll leave the food reviewing to the wankers, I'm here for season not reason.
I swing this way and that. I'm not admitting to manic depression, but any reflections of it in my writing, then all the better.
That's writing
folks. The things I do to keep you guys entertained so stop bitching and follow me.
I think of that threat to leave Perth. It was on Facebook. Caught me by surprise, over a year later I'm brewing on it.
I suspect who it was, not someone I respect.
'Let sleeping dogs lie,' advices Ace.
Cowards, the lot of them.
I'm the nicest kinda guy.
The poor remain poor because they keep on attacking their own kind.
They just don't get it.
That's why the middle class distance themselves from them.
They know the game and are too busy fending off the other middle-class assoles who want a bigger slice by taking someone else's.
Australians are asswipes. I ponder this before I fall asleep.
Maybe it's time to be an asswipe myself.
Man, if it wasn't for my size, I'd be receiving more punches to the gut.
I got king hit on the streets of Perth by a total stranger. He was drunk.
I kinda lunged into the punch and deflected it like I was catching a footy.
He hit me once and it was over.
The threat hits me every fucking day.
Who would in their right mind send such a threat?
Assholes usually. The ones never content with what they have and who want more.
He's that guy that gets death threats.
See, it's a stigma. There's something wrong with me and not the person making the threats. It works for them. It's another humiliation stacked on humiliation.
It's the poor victim who pays.
I took my leisurely time to leave Perth.
It comes down to drunks. They infiltrated the backpackers.
It's really run down since I was there over a year ago.
The Chinese owner let in one drunk and the others followed.
The Chinese owner let in one junkiein and the other's followed.
The poor Indian was raced out too.
He was too smart to let it worry him.
I let it worry me.
I'm paying for it every day.
'He's a soft touch, just fire him a message, he's Frank Russel on Facebook, here, see, send it on your fake account, the police will never know, it's not traceable. It will teach the upstart a lesson.'
It usually goes like that.
'Sure,' says the guy with the wrinkles around his lips, the one who carries his duffel bags and comes up with outrageous lies of fighting cancer and funding his own treatment and one who calls me fat even after I've given him two jobs and bought two of his crappy phones because he can't pay the rent, 'I'll fire it off on my account.'
He was just as rude and nasty as the others.
My crime with Wrinkled Lips was being too nice.
My crime with the Captain was being too nice.
Is being nice a crime?
And my crime against the cleaner and the soldier was not speaking my mind and telling them both to fuck off.
Wrinkled Lips set up things so nastiness could follow. And indeed it did, once he showed his true colors. There's something to be said about low achievers who take out their frustration on others who are trying to achieve.
It comes down to plain bitterness. I know, I've been there before.
He had a Facebook account that he used only for spying on people and using messenger, he was a prime candidate for firing off the message.
What message?
'You can run but you can't hide, leave Perth.'
Short and sweet but highly effective and charged with menace.
Or it could have been the Captain, he knew my account. He scoffed at it.
'Why don't you use your real name?'
And why don't you fuck off.
The hens pecked for morsels. That was the best they could do that day.
'It should fuck him up good,' says the ringleader, a man entering his twilight years jobless, on serious medication for mental issues and a drug and alcohol problem.
'Yeah, that will sort out the fucker,' chimes in the soldier. I slighted him too. I paid my way but wasn't committed to his delusion.
He met up with the drunk cleaner who said I just left. I knew the soldier was coming any day now. I got out just in the nick of time.
'I'll fuck him over,' says the soldier, ' that Chris Hill is a bad ass and affiliated, when he sees the photo of him on Facebook, he'll shit his pants.'
Wrinkled Lips smiles.
The photo was of a bikey. School of Hard knocks. Man, they love the cliches.
The soldier wasn't even a soldier. He was a guinea pig on a new drug trial and was paid off after he showed abnormal signs of paranoia.
He was using too much speed.
The hen peckers had no idea I was living out another drama with some more badasses and drunks.
This guy was also called Chris, and a 'real' bad ass bikey.
I think I saw him crying outside the house.
'Please don't leave me,' he pleaded.
She was a dog with a cunt the size of a Lunar Park entrance.
I've witnessed bad ass personally, it usually never comes with a warning. It could be a good beating in your sleep or a bomb going off at your favorite convenience store.
The rain is falling and a cool breeze is licking my neck.
I might order another milky tea. It seems to be settling me.
I might write more about bass asses.
A cunt is a cunt, unless it's dripping wet, then that's a real cunt.
The cleaner got raced out of the backpackers by someone who was offended with his know-it-all and totally drunken enriched asswipery.
The other loser who turned on me after I extended a helping hand is probably on the streets telling anyone who cares that he's going to write the next great book. He's one paragraph into it.
The Captain, who was most confrontational -- he made out he couldn't remember what he said the day after his drunken rants, maybe he couldn't remember, he was that toasted - is most likely trying to become a pensioner, or has blown his savings on Thai whores and is living down at the park with his loser mate who lives out of a duffel bag.
Things are always looking up.
The knee is holding up. I'm not pushing it.
I might even return to a clean room.
Pain use to be a friend of mine. One evening with my pain in the ass friend was one night too long.
Let the Gods continue blessing me, you're good deeds have not gone unnoticed.
Danial, from West Malaysia, is just starting his shift and puts on the music channel.
I really do need to get it out of my head that the Indians are asswipes.
They do their best and are the butt of everyone's jokes.
That makes us kindred spirits right?
'It certainly does,' says Danial, 'but I'd appreciate five stars for our restaurant, not the two you gave us.'
That can be changed, I said.
I had no idea he was a big reader of reviews on Google Maps.
'Fix it or you are a dead man.'
What??
'I'm a big fan of your blog,' he says and slaps me hard on the back.
He's dark as the ace of spade and a big fan of the former Brickfields in Kuala Lumpur when the whores and Indians roamed the late nights.
Alas, the place is cleaned up and all we can do is reminisce.
And he won't kill me.
'It just doesn't make financial sense.'
He's surprised that I was told to leave Perth.
'Once the coppers catch up on that guy, he's toast,' he says.
I suspect the guy who sent the threat is either in jail, dead from an O.D or locked up for life overseas.
Karma works in a mysterious way.
I told Danial that the hens were pushing me to act, they wanted me to make a wrong move. I'm always quiet and laugh off the insults.
I value my passport and no court appearances.
I know I'll get back at them here and I'll have a larger audience.
'Facebook is a treacherous place,' he says, advising me to stay safe and 'keep out of that shit hole.'
It might just save my sanity, I replied, thinking, this man actually reads my shit.
And Chris Hill could have been that asswipe Brit I met in Medan (Sumatra).
He didn't like writers either.
The Captain said if I ever write anything untrue about him, he'd hunt me down and kill me.
The nice folks you meet at backpackers, I met my fair share.
I always say it's that swinging punch coming from behind you that you have to worry about the most.
Let the dogs bark, the real killers just pull the trigger.
My knee is holding up. It's my neck now, it's getting really stiff.
I don't feel good about writing this post.
Yes you do, said Danial, you were righting a few wrongs.
He said to attack bullying head-on is to write about it.
'Then others can study it and learn from it.'
The Indians were fantastic tonight and the owner even loaned me his power bank to charge my phone.
I'm so glad I've not given up on them.
They are surprising in the best possible way.
Humanity straight ahead.
Bullies, we are onto you. Don't project your fuck ups onto us.
Danial pats me on the back.
'I think it's done.' He nods his head.
I did my best. And this was my story.
'Just keep off fuckbook,' he says as I take cautious steps back to my hotel room.
The knee is really holding up and Emmy skipped on cleaning my room.
I'm not concerned.
I'm in Borneo and loving it. I'm still writing. I'm making friends along the way and me and the Indians are just getting on swell.
The reward of suffering is experience.
That had to be a Cartwright quote.
The Indians got their revenge.
I'm shitting through the eye of a needle.
While her husband was dying she was sucking a cock of another man.
I really wasn't complaining.
Stories are swooping every which way.
I moaned as she worked on my tool.
But I can't go back there.
Brian is after me.
I hate Australians, said Brian, an ethnic Chinese who loved money over good bilateral relations.