We have more classes. I wonder how much more personal development I can endure before I actually turn into Oprah Winfrey. Today we talk about high-risk situations and coping skills. People say their biggest triggers are being at a party or having a fight with their partner. My biggest triggers are being at a club or being dumped. Shirley asks to think about why those events lead to drug use. I write down my pattern of thinking after being dumped, "Fuck them, there must be something wrong with me, what did I say wrong? I feel like I am being laughed, maybe it was just a joke, maybe they were just using me". Which becomes, "fuck this I am going to get fucked up". Shirley asks us to replace those preceding negative thoughts with more positive coping skills. I write down that if I am ever dumped again I will not personalise it, enjoy being independent again and remember that everyone gets dumped - it doesn't make u ugly.
The club issue is kind of more complicated. When I think about it I'm not sure whether I like the club scene or just the drug scene. I write down a coping skill for being at a club and feeling like drugs "have confidence in who I am, associate with people who are not trash bags and look forward to doing positive stuff the next day".
I'm not sure if any of this stuff is working, but its kind of fun giving it a try.
After class and Sam and I sit outside the villa having a smoke. It's hot and we are half covered by sun and shade.
"Want my cock, big boy?" he asks
"Fuck off Sam" I say
"I'll give u money"
"Dole money?"
"Yep, $10"
"Shut up u junkie"
"Luke, how is it that a gay man can walk into a tough heterosexual environment like this and give everyone shit and have everyone like them anyway"
"I think people just want me sexually"
"Yeah, must be that"
"Hey Sam, how u finding the classes?"
"Good man"
"Are u kind of coming to any sort of resolution about your drug using?"
"Kind of. See I started taking dexamphetamine with I was thirteen. I took it cause I couldn't concentrate like other kids. I took it for ten years, I got good grades and got into Uni and I don't think I would have been able to do it without the dexys. When I was Fourteen I started smoking marijuana and I don't know, I got so bent I felt like I had become privy to some secret world that normal people didn't know about. At Fifteen I started taking LSD and I fucking loved it because it made me feel like a child again. Then I started taking amphetamines and started taking heroin to help me wind down off amphetamines. I got dumped by my girlfriend and went crazy on heroin, I was numb and life without pain is a beautiful thing. "
"Until it all comes crashing down and u feel the worst pain ever?"
"That's it; fucking u wouldn't believe how awful I felt"
"I guess that's the thing isn't we need to take pleasure and pain and good and evil and all that stuff as part of life. We have to deal with it, somehow"
"Let's go for a workout" Sam says.
"Ok, sounds good"
And we walk off. We bump into a new girl named Eliza. She looks kind of messy, like the lead singer from Transvision Vamp but just off the back of a big weekend.
"Can I join u boys in the gym?"
"Of course" I say "I'm going to do a lap of the driveway first, if u want to come with me"
"Yep"
We start walking.
"What's your poison?" I ask her
"Alcohol"
"Have u been to rehab before?"
"No, I just want to learn why I drink"
"I reckon you'll work that out in her Eliza"
"Hey what's that?" Eliza asks pointing to something moving around in the grass.
Up close and we see it's a bird fluttering on the ground. It looks like its been hit by a car. We get closer and there's a snake coiled around its neck. The bird is fighting for its life but the snake is in control. The bird is slowly dying. The snake sees us and rears up.
"I think it thinks we want its food" Eliza says
"We should leave it" I say "Let it earn its reward"
We walk off and on the back we pass the snake again. The bird has stopped fluttering. The bird is dead.
"It completely asphyxiated it" Eliza says "what an amazing this to see"
And it was. The word asphyxiation always reminds me of my Granddad. He died before I was born. I have no idea what he even looked like. The first time I saw that word 'asphyxiation' I was about 13, it was on his death certificate.
"Asphyxiation by Hanging" it read.
Dad walked in as Mum and I were looking at it. "I always thought he broke his neck" he said "It must have been awful way for Dad to die and pity poor fucking Bobby who found him"
Bobby was Dad's older brother. He killed himself a few months later, he was a depressive sort of person When Bobby found his Dad swinging from the garage rafters in the middle of the night its thought it just pushed him over the edge.
The snake looked at us and reared up at us once more; he grabbed the bird by the head and dragged it into longer grass. It was only a small snake and a meal like that could keep it satisfied for months.
It was nature. It was cruel and just at the same time.
Class. Shirley talks lots and lots about survival mechanisms.
She says pretty much every thing we do is an attempt at surviving and humans are remarkably good at it. There are, however, she says maladaptive and adaptive means of survival.
"Our brains associate drugs with pleasure, the opposite of death, so that's why they want to take them"
Our need to survive does seem to answer a lot of questions.
Why do I always a partner? Cause I think it helps me survive.
Why do I want a better job? To get more money to help me survive.
Why do I want to be part of the gay scene? Cause humans form communities to help them survive.
Why do I feel anxiety? Cause somewhere in the back of my mind I think I'm in danger.
I get anxious and I get depressed and I hide in my room as a 'flight' from danger.
Why do I take drugs? Cause my brain associates it with pleasure - the opposite of pain and the opposite of death.
Survival, plain and simple. I think that I don’t really need any of these things to survive.
Back at the villa and the boys find weird ways to entertain ourselves. No drugs, no TV, no Sex.
So we make fun of Elizabeth's Phenergan habit.
I dance on the tables.
We use a cognitive-behavioral model to make fun of Jess' fashion sense.
Justin wrote a song about her based on this model the song was called "Don’t wear your sexual abuse on your sleeve.
It's all sorts of wrong.
I dress up as Mel. I sticky-tape newspaper to my t-shirt and wrapped a sheet around my jeans to symbolize her skirt look. I walk around the villa with my head to the side like I was retarded. We laugh ourselves silly. It's all a bit evil.
We write songs.
Sam writes the 'the Phenergan song', he plays it on the guitar....it goes like this;
I dont shoot smack
I dont drink bourbon
When I get blue
I like Phenergan
I came to rehab cause
I am bored
I should really be
In a psych ward
Phenergan
Phenergan
Wont u take me home
I live in a house with
a roof that’s solar
I like my lithium
cause I'm bipolar
When I get horny
I feel like jerkin
but nothing quite gets me off
like my Phenergan
Oh Phenergan
Phenergan
Wont you take it hole
We scream laughter. More evil. More scapegoating. I feel secure and I feel like I fit in.
Damien comes up to me after
"Luke I reckon that when you've been persecuted for your sexuality for a long period of time, you would worry that people are going to reject u"
"That's probably true"
"Well I just want u to know we think ur pretty cool here"
"Thanks mate" I say.
Nighttime and I fell asleep and I dream I am standing over a pool of snakes in a dark cave.
The snakes turn into cane toads.
I pick up a baseball bat and started hitting the cane toads.
The cane toads become the size and shape of crocodiles.
"Do I still kill them?'' I ask
There's no answer. I wake up.
I've now been here two weeks and it's Sunday morning meds and it seems like something is very wrong with Elizabeth.
Somebody get the Phenergan.
She dominates the conversation in a room with 8 people. She talks non-stop. She jumps around from topic to topic like from the Rockhampton Singles Club to her Nanna's hand-writing.
She starts going through the bookshelf. The books happened to be the worst books on the planet, but Big Lizzy is excited. She starts giving synopsis' on all the books and then hands them out to people. I'd found out that despite her appearance Elizabeth actually wasn’t a librarian, but today she was THE LIBRARIAN ON CRACK.
She hands me a book about 'Greybeard' some murderer guy.
She tells me it’s a classic.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that classics usually didn’t come out of 1994 Western Australia and weren't usually published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press.
It gets worse. She gives Richard the tough Wicca-Goth dude a Danielle Steele novel to read.
"It's Brilliant" she says.
She kind of reminds me of what my Nanna would act like if I gave her a line of speed and told her it was party time at Bingo. She is at this moment a mixture of someone who trying way too hard at an audition for the Antiques Roadshow TV program and a crack head librarian who just discovered a new Enid Blyton book.
Eventually, Christy tells her to shut-up and sit down.
To her credit, Maree does shut-up. Her shutting-the-fuck up at Christy's request is....well....an adaptive survival mechanism -I dont think anyone in here would want to fuck with Christy
I take my meds and go for a walk. A group of people sit in the smokers area as I walk passed.
Margie flaps her wrists at me.
"Oh Luke I heard u saw a snake"
"Yep"
"Eliza said u were very brave" she says to me talking baby-talk.
"I'm actually not scared of snakes, there are actually timid and fragile providing you leave them alone"
"Well u were brave"
"Ah-ha"
"I worked with this lovely gay guy, he reminds me just of you. I loved him. He was adorable. We had a blue tongue lizard at work one day and he ran off screaming"
"So?"
"So u were brave"
"Not all gay guys are the same"
"But u remind me of him"
"How?"
"Cause ur both so lovely"
"Thanks Margie, but I did grow up with a slaughterman father. I’ve seen hundreds of pigs get killed."
"That must of been traumatizing for you"
Margie is now really starting to annoy me. She can't seem to get past my homosexuality.
I am not Luke the human being, I am Luke the gay person.
I grab my crutch.
"Actually Margie the point is that I do have a dick, I do have balls and I am still as fucked up and murderous as the next man"
Debbie laughed. Clearly, my point is still lost on her. I am annoyed. I continue my walk.
Outside I find a rat that is lying still, gasping for breath. The rat had eaten poison. It's in pain. I come back an hour later and it's there, still gasping for breath, slowly and painfully dying.
I tell a staff member and she asks me to kill it.
"There's a shovel outside, use that" she says.
The shovel is already being used by some boys doing concreting. Instead, I pick up a large pick. I'm holding it over the head of the rat as it lies there stunned. I look into its eyes. Soon there this creature would no nothing except darkness. I smash the pick down with full force and hit it right behind its head. I pull the pick away, its head is only hanging by the thread of its spinal cord. It's switching. I hit it again and again until it stopped moving. I go away and borrow the shovel. I pick up the carcass with the shovel and through it down the embankment. I quietly go and wash the blood off the shovel. "Go Luke" Beck says as she walked past.
"Yes us fags sure now how to kill shit" I say.
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