1.
W stands center stage, spotlit, casually dressed. Black shirt (not tucked in), black pants.To his right, on a small round table, are a baseball cap, a pair of sunglasses, a pair of spectacles, three black medical masks, and a circular mirror, roughly 10cm in diameter.
W
Once upon a time there was a normal young man with a normal life. But one day a whirlwind sucked him up into the sky and dropped him somewhere he no longer recognized. That is, he no longer recognized himself. If this were a children’s tale, there’d be a clear narrative and a happy ending. I can’t promise either. Stories tend to be coherent wholes that follow an emotional arc. Like a boomerang thrown well, they bring you back to yourself, only better. When Dorothy is transported to Oz, there’s always the sense she’ll come back triumphant and we with her, her trials and travails just more bricks on that road, one yellow brick after another. Simply follow along and you’ll get there. This trail is more like a bunch of bricks strewn over a desolate landscape, a desert maybe. We’ll hop from one to another, but it’s up to you to make your own road of it and decide where it leads.
W dons the sunglasses and the cap. He is now G.
2.
G
My brother once said to me, “G, he said, you are one of the main reasons for ruining my life”. His exact words. To the syllable. He said it very seriously and profoundly, which was unusual for him as he’s generally a trivial fuck. But I could see the sincerity ache in his eyes. And that he saw I saw and I didn’t care. Which, I suppose, reinforced the whole thing in his mind because he walked off then with a hard look and a self-righteous air of misery. That was the last time I saw him, funny enough.
But, honestly, it’s B.S. I never ruined his life. Or anyone’s. I had my own problems. And there wasn’t a queue linin’ up to help either. There was no mad rush of support e.g. when I ran outta cash in the middle of the Nullarbor desert, with nothing to eat; havin’ ta bum off the lads, writing IOUs with X looking at me like “I told you so”. Oh, X, my “best friend”. I’ll tell ya more about him in a minute. Anyway, I coulda hit the bastard but I figured he’d give in eventually. The others did. They didn’t let me starve. I never starved. But it was a struggle. And X didn’t give in. He was the only one who held out. So, that’s support? Fine, then I’m the bad guy because my goofball brother can’t handle his shit. Pin me up on the wall and crucify me. I’ll tell ya somethin’, people are mad.
X to start with. Absolute nut. We were best mates for a long time. And I loved that fucker. I even told him so (when I was on an E, but I meant it). Speaking of love, he got tripped up by a woman. Fucked himself up over a bitch, he did. And I couldn’t save him. I felt I should. I was the one who introduced them. Let me tell ya about it.
It was all about Aus. See, goin’ to Aus had been a dream of ours for years. We’d spend whole afternoons watching reruns of ‘Bush Tucker Man’ and fantasizing about shagging Aussie bitches like the ones on ‘Home and Away’. It was a mixture of the heroic and the degenerate. And, eh, I was the more degenerate. I’d even told L I’d come back to her, to wait for me. But that was just shit talk “We’re on the road again! Time to blow our load again!” Yeah, so, X was more romantic, more sensitive. Didn’t have a girlfriend. Hadn’t even got his hole until he was 20. I had the charisma, see. Or thought I did. Later there would be… doubts. X was a dark horse. He let me down. But in that dreamy sunshine of hope coming up to the trip, I had no fears about him or me or anything. What I had was 2000 Ozzie bucks in my pocket and a ticket to the future.
G removes the sunglasses and cap and puts on the spectacles and one medical mask. He is now X.
3.
X
I don’t know why I cried. I think I cried because he cried. Then it was OK to cry. There was something of the performance about it. But after I started, it seemed real. That should have been a warning. Of the type of hold G had over me and what I was walking into. I was supposed to be the one with the fuckin’ brain. But I didn’t care about that. I was leaving it behind in that airport lounge of teary goodbyes and stepping onto a plane with someone who was almost 100% dick. And perversely was a hero to me.
Heroes, heroes, what are they? Where do they come from? There’s something in the air. A stinking smog of manipulation and lies. I’m paranoid but I was never paranoid enough. G was the image I lacked. He had the crack, the cajones, the… You’re chasing, running to stand still. Why?
Agh, I don’t want to get philosophical. That never helped. Not to this day. No matter how you dress a word salad, it’s still a fuckin’ word salad. We’re talkin’ about Aus because that’s where the core is. That’s where there was a chance. That’s where things exploded.
X picks up the mirror and holds it in front of his face. He speaks from behind it, through it in a creepy voice. It obscures his head completely. He is now M.
4.
M
The mirror is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. Poison chocolates. No! Yummy chocolates that you must get more and more of until they… until you… Who is that? Who is it? Who is it knocking on my door? I’m a goat. You’re a wolf. No, I’m the wolf. Teacher, leave those kids alone!
5.
G [As per earlier directions: Sunglasses and hat.]
With S? No, I didn’t stay in contact. No, not at all. The things that bitch did to my head. Blamed me for the anorexia. I had no clue. She was thin. Too thin. But sure… I didn’t know a thing until I was called to her house for a quote unquote talk. With her and her mum. Me, standing there in the witness box, the accused, as she’s saying how I’d point to girls at the beach, comment on their bodies. That I gave her a complex blah de blah. Here we go, the blame-G-merry-go-round. I didn’t say shit, but inside I was spitting daggers. I had a sense they wanted something from me, an apology, an acknowledgement, something. But I held my ground. “Ain’t going down like that, no, I ain’t going down like that!” All I’d had from that bitch in the last months of our relationship was head fucks. I remember we’d hardly split a week and she’d shifted D, fucking D, the moron. We used to laugh at him. D! Jealousy got me back with her. I couldn’t get away and I couldn’t get near either. But now, I’d had it with precious. I held my ground. In the end, they just stared at me. What are you going to do? Call the Gards? I saw her once after that on Patrick Street. She blanked me. Thank God. Being the sentimental twat I am, I probably would have given her the time of day.
6.
M [Mirror]
Every piece of you becomes a piece of someone else. Reflected in your dreams. We torture you. You fight us. Epic struggles! But your victories are pyrrhic. The demons are just the yous you can’t hold together.
7.
X [Specs and medical mask]
“Tell A I love her”, I actually said that. Must have thought I was in a Rom Com. I said it to the truck driver I bummed a lift off when I ran away from her house because I knew she didn’t love me. I left a letter. Fuck knows what I said in it. But it wasn’t a Rom Com. There was no emotional denouement. It was funny the truck driver knew her but after he dropped me off at the train station, I stood there as empty as when I left, with no vision of relief other than to go back again. More running to stay still. So, I went back. When we finally parted, I attempted a flourish. As she was driving off, I jumped in front of her car (oh, not like that, I wasn’t trying to top myself… yet). I jumped in front of her and gave her a kind of vaudeville salute as if I wasn’t the Hunchback of Notre Dame but Fred Astaire. I don’t know how she reacted. I couldn’t see. But when I called months later, she just said “Well, there’s a blast from the past”. Hm, “I was the future once”.
8.
M [Mirror]
Litost. Is a Czech word. It means to come face to face with your own despair. I am litost. Look at me. Litost. And every time you look, you break another piece off. Forget putting them back together, Humpty. You’ve been Dumptied!
9.
X [Specs and now dons an extra medical mask, covering one eye]
I couldn’t get my head round why they liked me. It was a surprise to us all. G reacted with a mix of pride and horror. I was his protege or his successor or both. He wasn’t getting any and they were falling all over me. First the Kiwi coke head, then the Swiss Dancer, then… then A. That started well. It… started well. She’d call me up and tell me she missed me. She’d invite me to her house. We’d do it in the park toilets after work. All the while I couldn’t get my head round it. Suddenly I had everything I wanted or could want under my tiny horizons. It was believing in it was the problem. Show me a vision, a Madonna, and I will retort A: Blonde. Slim. Alive. Vivacious. Desire. Vulnerability. Life.
10.
M [Mirror]
They like a bit of freak over here. Everything is upside down. Look at me though and I’ll right it for you. I’ll right the wrongs by wronging the rights! I’ll twist you back twisted. When everything is upside down it’s only a matter of time before the bottom falls out. You. Will. Not. Leave. Me.
11.
X [Specs and 2 medical masks]
She is sitting next to me on a bench in Woolhara. It’s a cool winter’s night. I have my arm around her. She’s telling me she has been hurt before. Falling in love with someone who was bound to leave. She thinks I’m bound to leave. I reassure her. She moves closer. She moves closer but I am not closer. I‘m caught again in a performance, seeing myself saying, listening to myself saying, knowing what to say.
12.
G [Hat and sunglasses]
Talk shit to them and get them into bed. Otherwise you end up just being friends. There’s no point just being friends. I gave him plenty of good advice. And it worked. But it worked too well. Next thing I know he’s falling in love, the twat. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against it, but not now. We need to get on. We need to move. We didn’t come here to stay in one place and get fucking married. I’m telling him straight because he needs to hear it. He needs to be reminded of loyalty. He’s changing in front of my eyes. I tell him “You’re different, distant”. I’ve always said thinking with your dick is dangerous. But this is worse. Are you there X? Am I getting through to you? Say something!
13.
X [Specs and 2 medical masks]
Will I be caught in this moment forever? Frozen in abject humiliation? It came down to a choice. I had a choice! I. Had. A. Choice!
14 and 15.
—- EKM PORTAL TO PARTS 14 and 15 —-
—- PRIMARY CONTELLATION —-
16.
W [No props on or over face]
You see. Fractured. But there’s something there, no? Sorry, it’s me again and we’re not finished. I just forgot to say something. No relation to anyone living or dead. Pure coincidence. A writer lies in the service of truth, which is the opposite of what most people are doing most of the time. But G is not the wicked witch of the West. He’s a creation like all of us. If you want to find the bad guy, it’s not even the dufus behind the loudspeaker, it’s the loudspeaker itself. It’s listening to it. X did and G did too in his own way. Binary thoughts, hero/villain, beautiful/ugly, accepted/rejected, cool/uncool. Code is law and we’ve all got the virus in one way. Or another.
17.
G [Hat and sunglasses]
So we split up. There was a Barney too far. He went back to Sydney to chase his “love”. I drove up to Darwin to chase whatever I could find. I chose adventure. He chose a bitch. That about sums up the difference between me and him if you really want to know. Or if you don’t. [Sings] “I am me if you please. I am me if you don’t please”. Fuck knows what he was or is. No, I know. He’s Romeo gone wrong. In terms of tragedy, you gotta hand it to him. He outdid Shakespeare. Hehe, you have to laugh, don’t you. In the end, you have to laugh.
18.
X [Specs and 3 Covid masks]
I have made my mind up to kill myself. It’s a strange feeling knowing you won’t ever see your family again.
There’s no place like home. And there never will be.
19.
M [Mirror]
Oh Dorothy… Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
20.
X [Specs and three medical masks]
Aus was just the start. It went on. Korea, Thailand, China. It could thrive anywhere. You could never accuse it of being racist. No, it was an equal opportunities employer that used me and others through me. An emotionally lobotomised agent of chaos, I was. Though I had a choice. Anyway, we’re not finished with Aus. We’re still in Aus.
[Lights dim and brighten again. We are still with X.]
21.
X [Specs and 3 masks]
Never ever try that again, I say. Or what he says? Or what? Yes.. or what? I told him not to give me orders and he went for me, pushed me. I didn’t touch him. All words. Just fucking words. I had a shovel in my hand. I could have beat his brains in. You don’t know how many times I fantasised about it. Him lying in that hole we dug together, knocked out, me shovelling dirt on top. An early grave for both of us. Problem solved. But, no, I just walked off. I flew back to Sydney the next day. It didn’t mean much to him. He even called me from Brisbane where he ended up. As if nothing had happened. By that stage I was hardly even there. A was gone and after being fired from the shit job I’d gone back to, I spent most of the time in my room listening to the lads talkin’ about me. Why doesn’t he come out with us? He’s septic. E hates him. Don’t know why he came back. If I looked like that I’d see a doctor. He’s just quiet. He’s septic. E saw him staring at his reflection on the bus. Ever noticed how long he spends in the bathroom? I thought it was because he had long hair. He has no long hair now. Septic. For a guy who’s no spring chicken. E fucking hates him. I think he needs a doctor.
22.
M [Mirror]
He’s a coward! He has no heart! He’s stupid! He’s a lost little girl!
I think he needs a doctor. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
23.
X [Specs and 3 masks]
This is the 23rd scene and I was 23 when I left Australia [takes off one mask (upper)]. I am X and my story is as broken as I am. I am X and I am the pieces of a shattered mirror flung across the Nullabor desert. These pieces are all I can offer you. I am X and I still love her. I am X and you can’t see me because I can’t see me…
[Takes off another mask (upper)]
I am X and I remember the last time I felt truly free was the day of my 18th birthday. G was there. We were smoking a joint. “This is the life”, I said to him. And I meant it. He just looked at me. I am X and that was thirty years ago.
[Removes last mask, puts it on the table, and walks off]
Coda:
[Walks back on stage]
This is the life!
Curtain