Mar 2, 2009

The Psychotic Cyclops Part 1

After being introduced to beer froth at the tender age of a toddler I was well on my way to the adventures of escapism by my early teens. In fact by the age of nine I was regularly taxing my uncles endless weed supply with wanton abandon. I remember so clearly, solo smoking a joint at the bus stop, on my way to Loftus primary school at 8am. Some of my peers at that time had experimented with alcohol of which I had participated yet they were unanimously concerned that I had progressed so quickly to the evils of weed, of which they knew nothing about. My uncle was ok, he was happy, had his own Newspaper he published & smoked that shit every day from what I could tell, but just maybe not at 8 a clock in the morning.

Now a whole bunch of events unfolded between the ages of 9 and 16 of which some may be drawn upon later as I indulge you in the sordid details of my life, but for now I'll just cut to chase & capture of that moment in time. I was 16 living with my dear mother and her try hard criminal boyfriend in a large waterfront house we rented overlooking the Georges river. I was quite the pot head at that age & had taken to scouting and harvesting other people’s crops whose gardens were almost always adjacent to the bush. It was just better that way, as you could scope the area well without being notice. Then lay in wait till an hour or two after lights went out, moving in with kitchen knife and pillow case for a quick slash and grab of the sticky bulbous buds. I knew enough about the stuff now that we (me and Ricky) would always hit a backyard crop a week or two before due harvest. These midnight missions were few but yielded enough weed to keep me stoned everyday all day for months on end. At that age smoking that much bud is not a good look, let alone looking at what was going on in my head. I was probably bordering Psychotic for a year before I really flipped out, and when I did it was not without some really demented delusions.

My mother's boyfriend had his own story, so I will paint a little to give you a better perception of where my delusions seeded. He was supposedly born into a concentration camp, a Polish Jew, whose first living memory was making pillows from hair taken from other gassed Jews, including his father. Upon arriving in Australia he was living at a place called Silver City where he witnessed the raped of his mother and at age 15 was taken in by the criminal underworld that ran Darlinghurst's alternative industries, of which I believe his trade was bashing the shit out of people and stealing cars for cut-n-shut re-sale. So he always had guns, drugs and would often entertain questionable people including reasonably high ranking police inspectors and the odd general scumbag, all of whom seemed to fear him. It may be how he explained in detail some of the acts he had committed on people. I was a pacifist, a hippy of sorts, I guess trying to re-establish a 60's mindset experience in a teenage body present in the mid 80's. Not hard to do when the weed supply was almost always endless. My perceptions of John (his actual name) were that of a Pit bull with no master he could be as genuine and friendly as any dog but if angered up, just watch those teeth seek blood not to mention the lock jaw.

One day when I had returned home to Dingerra Cres, Oatley he decided to indulge me in a macabre questioning. He'd been watching some horror flick and asked me with a twisted passion in his eyes... "How could someone stab a person then twist the blade around in all directions ?" He asked me "Have you ever wondered what it would feel like ?" I can't remember if I responded or what I responded but it triggered me beyond return. I knew he did not like me, that he thought I was a dole bludger (I was) and that I was a thorn between him and my mother (I was) there had been some tension in the house weeks prior. I returned to my room smoking yet even more weed I began to play his tapes in my head, thinking about how he always said all I needed was a good bash from him. My mind had left the realms of reason and I began to see he had a plan to kill me. The fear and adrenalin kicked in like the ignition on a Harley Davidson, I was off. I climbed out the window, onto the boundary fence then up onto the neighbor’s car port roof, panicked with fear for my life I knocked on their door, spoke briefly with them trying to find some sort of calm safe haven. I think the speed of my babbling about the threat of my stepfather was half a concern for them the other half would have been my toxic anxiety with a physical agitation that accompanies the upward spiral of a full blown Psychosis.

What I am about to reveal now is the reality of what I perceived without retracting back to a subjective 3rd party view of this experience, the fear is real, the anxiety and adrenalin is so intensely intoxicating it's like I became some super human, eagle eyed, bionic ears, extra sensory perceptions of a spiritual psychic.

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