The Speechwriter

by Martin McKenzie-Murray

  The scenes were now magnificently lurid — they would’ve made John Waters blush. The crowd were like seventeenth-century Englishmen who had mistaken hallucinogens for magic, and welcomed their mental distortions as divine passports. In MDMA they had found their cosmic Sherpa. In the Minister they had found their ambassador to the stars.

  The Minister had now seized the gallery’s most expensive artwork from its display stand: DJ Blinky, an embalmed koala with oversized headphones priced at a quarter-million. The crowd, anticipating spiritual catharsis, surrounded the Minister. Some wept. In the middle of the circle, the Minister cradled Blinky — a Cosmic proxy, he declared, for our Creativity.

  ‘This,’ the Minister said, raising the marsupial above his head, ‘is a daughter of Zeus. Our Muse. Our inspiration. But we are not so far from the Gods. We too are made of stardust, older than time. Fuck, we are time!’

  The weeping intensified, before Stanley broke the circle and handed the Minister a bottle of kerosene and a lighter. Solemnly, the Minister laid DJ Blinky on the polished concrete floor and showered him with kero. ‘Now we consecrate our bond with the Muse!’ he shouted, and sparked a flame.

  Blinky’s immolation didn’t require accelerant. This daughter of Zeus was embalmed with formaldehyde, and she lit up like a meteorite breaching the atmosphere. She also began issuing thick, aggressively toxic plumes of smoke — all the better to wrap Her arms around the Cosmic Children. But as the crowd enjoyed their smoky benediction, the toxins were enjoying their insinuation into nervous systems. Some lost consciousness — casualties, it seemed to most, not of poisoning, but of exaltation. Though not to the paramedics, who arrived a little later and were frustrated in their attempts to resuscitate patients by the deliriously passionate hugs of Stanley and his boss.

  Some political commentators later argued that the Minister should have anticipated all of this. Please. What happened was unprecedented, unimaginable. Regardless, the story of the blitzed minister and spiked salmon was manna for the political talk shows. ‘This confirms what every right-minded person already knew about artists,’ the social conservative said, trying to disguise his excitement. ‘They’re perverted crooks who demand the public fund their eccentric decadence.’

  He had a point. I might’ve added ‘vapidly righteous’. Our department’s most recent funding round for literature had included a spot for a writer on a shuttle that would service the International Space Station, then perform 20 orbits of Earth. The successful candidate, however, wasn’t obliged to write about the experience — the selection panel were ‘loath to dictate an artist’s vision’ — and, six months after returning home, Scott Luscious submitted an essay about his brief addiction to energy drinks.

  Anyway, the panel’s resident feminist, whom one might have expected to counsel against drugging people, refused to agree with a conservative — presumably it was off-brand — and improvised an edgy distinction. ‘Artists have always pushed boundaries,’ she said. ‘I admit this pushed it pretty far, but let’s be honest: it was a love drug. I think we can all agree that our politicians could probably do with a bit more love in their hearts.’

  ‘What was a minister doing there in the first place?’ the opposition backbencher said. ‘I mean, it makes you wonder about the priorities of this government. I’m not sure the taxpayer is too keen on our leaders attending weird drug parties.’

  Here was proof that partisan talking points could be affixed to anything. Even surreal criminality; even things that might normally prompt simple astonishment. ‘It really makes you wonder,’ he said. It sure did. Depressed, I mused bitterly on my early optimism for Canberra. What I didn’t know was that, right then, a seed was being planted in the exotically fertile soil of my subconscious. I turned the telly off and walked out to my balcony.

  In my experience, marijuana doesn’t care for your expectations of it. It’s a psychic bloodhound: it sniffs out the roots of your mental disorder, then rips them from the earth. But when I was younger, there were fewer roots to expose. When I smoked, I giggled and rhapsodised. I dove into music like pools of sunlit caramel. I played Simon and Garfunkel, and sat at their feet in a state of blissful piety. In these moments, I could believe that dope was deliciously enhancing my innocence.

  So on my balcony that evening, I decided to renew my old optimism in weed. I rolled a spliff. As I inhaled, I stared hopefully at the ember. As I exhaled, I fixed my attention upon a geranium with a solitary flower. Perhaps I could find renewal this way.

  I was wrong to think this. Very wrong. Those days were gone. As the literal darkness assumed some heavy metaphorical properties, I stared at the flower for equilibrium. ‘Relax,’ I told myself, ‘and absorb its innocence.’

  I tried — but trying was the problem. Plus, I was distracted by HMAS Fear, which I could see approaching from the horizon.

  ‘Look at the flower,’ I reminded myself.

  ‘I’m already looking at it.’

  ‘If you’re talking back to me, then you’re not properly looking at it.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you want from me. I’m looking.’

  ‘Looking is just the start, I want you to really look at it.’

  ‘You want me to really look at it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What the fuck is that — really looking at it?’

  ‘Am I speaking in tongues? I want you to really look at it.’

  ‘You keep emphasising the word “really” like that fucking explains everything.’

  ‘You just don’t get it.’

  One reason I didn’t get it was that HMAS Fear had now berthed in my harbour. Which meant the ship’s captain was nearby. The Hound. Counterintuitively, perhaps, The Hound is a young and voluble Californian surfer. Sun-bleached and salt-matted hair. Faded T-shirt, hemp shorts, aged sandals. Aviator sunnies. Seems harmless, right? He’s not. He’s an agent for weird and blistering truths. And here he was on my shore. The motherfucking Hound.

  Brother, did you hear the Shadow Justice Minister this morning? Says necrophilia is the end game of the Commies. That’s right, my man. Says his esteemed counterpart wants to exhume David Birnie and make him his gay zombie lover. Got himself a bus with their faces on it — smooching, man — and he’s gonna personally drive that thing ’round the country.

  This was actually true.

  My dude, I’m not a political man like yourself, but your ‘marketplace of ideas’ is just fucking toilet graffiti. You’re redundant, man. Your country doesn’t care about speeches. Hasn’t for a long time. It cares about messages, man. And they don’t belong to writers anymore. They belong to advertising guys. And the Blue Bird and Zuckerberg. And the Gut and the Id. You dig? I like you, man, but you’re sticky as a motherfucker with fantasy. The world ain’t got no interest in your talent. You trying to bend the world around you, but the world don’t even know you exist. You’re Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense. You’re dead, man.

  Not today, Hound. Please, not today.

  You started this ride, bro. You lit me up. Now I’m inside you. And I’m telling you something important: maybe it’s more honest to swim with the transgression than pretend to float above it, you dig? Fuck, man, maybe it’s more honest to accelerate the sickness than pretend you got a cure.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  Man, you dig me.

  No, you’re a bum and a spectre. And you’re squatting in my head. Please fuck off.

  I got nowhere else to be, man.

  Accelerate the sickness.

  Right on.

  Our nation had been drifting a long time. I could see that now. A while back, our car hit some black ice and it’s been sliding ever since — a big, dumb, traction-less hunk of metal sliding towards the ditch.

  Accelerate the sickness, man.

  How?

  But he was gone. I’d banished him by puking over the bal
cony. Though not entirely. As I lay awake in bed that night, the words ‘accelerate the sickness’ lingered in my head, smelling of geranium: a stoner’s synaesthesia. What did he mean? What did I mean? Maybe I should get out of politics. Reinvent myself. But how could I change my career? This was all I ever wanted. Maybe it was all I ever was. The Fear was expelled, but I was still high as a fucking kite. I imagined Dr. Seuss trying to change his career:

  INT. NEWSROOM – DAY

  Bored with writing children’s books, DR. SEUSS becomes a cub reporter for the Los Angeles Times. His first round is the crime desk; his first assignment the slaughter of a suburban family. SEUSS has just filed his story, and sits anxiously before his grizzled EDITOR, awaiting judgement.

  EDITOR

  (reading)

  ‘There was blood on the stairs,

  And blood on the toys/

  There was blood in the bath,

  And blood on the boys.

  ‘The Dad, well it seemed,

  Was tired of life/

  So he bludgeoned them all,

  And then used a knife.’

  What in God’s name is this, son?

  DR. SEUSS

  (nervously)

  Is it … any good?

  EDITOR

  Son, have you read a newspaper before?

  DR. SEUSS

  Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I need this job, mister. I have one kid, two kids. Red kids, blue kids.

  EDITOR

  Are you even a real doctor?

  This was the moment everything changed. The Hound was onto something. Something big, something resonant. Accelerate the sickness, he urged.

  Well, okay.

  A breakthrough in the prawn case

  My phone was ringing.

  I woke and reached for it, my cognition caught between waking and dreaming. It was a little after 3am.

  ‘Father?’

  ‘It’s John.’

  ‘You’re in hell?’

  ‘Toby, it’s John.’

  My cognition was only slowly sharpening itself, before it cut through the dream-web.

  ‘Father was on Late Night with Bessie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘So was Churchill.’

  ‘Wake the fuck up, Toby.’

  ‘John?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Where’s Father?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Toby. We need to go into the office.’

  ‘It’s 3am.’

  ‘Jason insists — he’s had a breakthrough with the prawns.’

  ‘Can’t this wait for the sun?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Then tell him to wait.’

  John lowered his voice. ‘The Wizard demands it.’

  ‘Is she in bed with you right now?’

  ‘See you in 30.’ And he hung up.

  I’d always suspected one of the cleaners. Poorly paid, terrible union.

  ‘You won’t believe this shit,’ Jason said when we’d arrived. John and I were standing behind Jason in his office, slurping coffee and watching him start the surveillance program on his computer. You could have threaded Jason’s pupils with a bratwurst.

  ‘Are you high?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve got the fucker,’ Jason said proudly.

  Since the cameras, Jason had developed an ultra-zealous commitment to the prawn case. For weeks, the footage had been streamed live to Jason’s phone, which he believed it was his holy duty to monitor. Unwaveringly. He was helped by heroic quantities of methamphetamine.

  ‘So for weeks, you’ve been staring at a live feed of our empty office?’ I asked.

  ‘Only at night.’

  ‘In what world are these prawns sufficiently important that you would torch the precious few brain ce—’

  ‘What have you got?’ John asked irritably.

  Jason enlarged a small square so that it filled the screen. Then he pressed play.

  ‘Holy shit,’ John said.

  ‘Wow,’ I said.

  ‘He must really hate you guys,’ Jason said rapidly. ‘And I don’t blame him.’

  It was Stanley. And from the footage we could figure out his MO. He’d wait for the cleaners outside, flash his parliamentary badge, and piggy-back on their entrance without registering his own. Then, in his blue suede yacht shoes, he’d sow hell’s scent.

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ John said.

  ‘I can waterboard him,’ Jason offered.

  ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ I said.

  Given their pique — John’s emotional, Jason’s principally chemical — I anticipated sympathy for my plot. At least temporarily.

  ‘What is it?’ John asked.

  ‘We blackmail him.’

  ‘Blackmail?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘To what end?’ John asked.

  ‘That’s for us to decide.’ But I’d already decided for myself. Stanley was tight with the Prime Minister’s advisers — I wanted a job in the PM’s office.

  ‘Hang on,’ Jason said, ‘blackmail is bad, yeah? I came here to do good.’

  ‘And what good have you done?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve found this cunt, haven’t I?’

  ‘On a diet of meth.’

  ‘Got the job done, mate.’

  ‘You screen employees for drug use.’

  ‘I’m still waiting for the gratitude.’

  ‘Thank you,’ John said.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Jason said, and he removed a bag of speed from his pocket and emptied it on his desk. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Jason, when was the last time you slept?’ I asked.

  ‘Friday.’

  ‘Which one?’

  Jason looked at me blankly, then snorted a line through a tightly rolled Post-it Note.*

  [* ‘You’ve given no shits about Jason’s turmoil here, mate. He’s heartbroken. He’s inhaling gear like a fucken scuba diver. He’s haunted, mate. And you’ve got no curiosity about this. He’s always blamed those prawns for his lady pissing off, and now they’re back. Was he still single then?’

  ‘Was he single?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking ya.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You dunno. Did you ever fucken inquire about his health, mate? Did you ever fucken ask him how he was doing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you reckon I’m a callous prick. The man was in fucken turmoil, Toby.’

  ‘I was heartbroken too.’

  ‘Not now you’re not. And now is when you’re writing this fucken thing, right? Jason’s just a prop. A fucken meatball with eyes. You haven’t cared to get inside his head, mate. Haven’t cared to make him a real man. Cause this book’s just you, mate. It’s six pounds of Toby in a four-pound bag.’

  ‘Garry, it’s a fucking memoir.’]

  ‘We’re professionally immortal, right?’ I said. ‘So the question is: what do we want? Let’s demand an upgrade.’

  ‘I want to be one of those dudes protecting the Prime Minister,’ Jason said.

  ‘Needs to be realistic,’ I said. ‘Blackmail isn’t a fucking genie’s lamp.’

  ‘Bro, you don’t think I could do it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I bench a hundred.’

  ‘They’re sworn officers,’ I said. ‘Specially trained. Stanley’s influence doesn’t extend to making you either of those things.’

  ‘Then I want to protect Parliament House.’

  ‘Like, a security guard there?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s work with that.’

  ‘John?’

  ‘What the hell are we doing?’

  ‘We’re exploiting our
professional immortality.’

  ‘That clause only covers incompetency, Toby. Not criminality.’

  ‘Well, let’s see.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’m very comfortable where I am.’

  ‘Because of the Wizard?’

  ‘Because I’m not a fucking criminal.’

  John was fuming. I called Stanley anyway.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘The jig’s up, Knuckles.’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Toby.’

  ‘Toby?’

  ‘The fucking speechwriter.’

  ‘It’s 4am.’

  ‘You don’t choose the time of your reckoning.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Check your email. I’ll wait.’

  I put him on speaker. We waited a few minutes while he watched the footage. There was a long pause. ‘I don’t want my parents to see this.’

  ‘They don’t have to, Stanley. But we have some demands.’

  The Prime Minister is under renewed pressure today, after it was discovered he criticised water polo in a bizarre 1975 column for his university’s newspaper. The then-20-year-old wrote: ‘Of the many noble student groups our university can fund — our debate team, say, or this very publication — our administrators have decided to give a significant amount to a group of thick brawlers devoted to a vicious and obscure sport. I say “sport”, but it’s hard to confer that title here. When one designates something a sport, one might expect excitement and strategic coherence, rather than primitive thrashing. If our university continues to fund The Swordfish, it is not hard to imagine Australian society, in our lifetime, regressing to a state of violent Hobbesian disorder.’

  By afternoon, my criminal delirium had waned. I no longer felt like a brilliant liberator. Unlike Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, my sense of rectitude was weak, ultra-contingent. Twelve hours earlier, I was surfing silver waves of adrenaline. Now I was broken on the reef. I was going to work for the Prime Minister, but I was also a crook. A blackmailer.