25th Hour

Monty Brogan 

[standing in the men's bathroom, talking to himself in a mirror with a "FUCK YOU" written on it] Well, fuck you, too. Fuck me, fuck you, fuck this whole city and everyone in it. Fuck the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back. Fuck the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car. Get a fucking job! Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores, stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. SLOW THE FUCK DOWN! Fuck the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35. Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English? Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin' and dealin' and schemin'. Go back where you fucking came from! Fuck the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds! Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gekko wannabe mother fuckers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for FUCKING LIFE! You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that shit? Give me a fucking break! Tyco! Worldcom! Fuck the Puerto Ricans. 20 to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst fuckin' parade in the city. And don't even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, 'cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good. Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giambi, Louisville slugger, baseball bats, trying to audition for the Sopranos. Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermes scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You're not fooling anybody, sweetheart! Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take five steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended 137 years ago. Move the fuck on! Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust! Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child's pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you're at it, fuck JC! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in fuckin' Otisville, J! Fuck Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and backward-ass, cave-dwelling, fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your 72 whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal Irish ass! Fuck Jacob Elinsky, whining malcontent. Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend's ass. Fuck Naturelle Riviera, I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back, sold me up the river, fucking bitch. Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar sipping on club sodas, selling whisky to firemen, cheering the Bronx bombers. Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row-houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue, from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park slope to the split-levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place. [pause] No. No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan. You had it all, and you threw it away, you dumb fuck!

10 Step Guide On To How To Crucify A Hipster With A Pair Of Scissors

10 Step Guide On To How To Crucify A Hipster With A Pair Of Scissors

1. With the scissors puncture their tires on their fixes or push bikes.
2. Cut their shoelaces.
3. Attack their clothes cutup their ironic knitted sweater.
4. Or buttoned to the top shirt perhaps their bow tie.
5. Cut up their Skinny maroon jeans.
6. Snip off their hairdo swirl quiff or cut off their top knot.
7. Cut off their fucking Ned Kelly pimping beards or mustaches.
8. Snip their conspicuous thick rimmed non prescription glasses in half.
9. Stab with the scissors in the holy stigmata stab their Jesus phone face up. (Now naked, hairless and disorientated as they can not use the Google maps to get to safety)
10. For the final most cruelest yet most humane act would be to cut off both their thumbs.

You can buy another pair of skinny jeans, another knitted sweater or  Jesus phone Jesus now has a retail value I believe it is $599.00 but you only get two thumbs in this life.

That is how to crucify a hipster with a pair of scissors in 10 Steps.

Let Me Clear My Throat Before I Begin... One Of These Days It Will Be With METH!

Let me clear my throat before I begin... One of these days it will be with meth. I need my Benzedrine fix. I need some sort of medicated-codeine-high-octane-behind-the-counter-legit-smack-kind-a-shit.

And so I found myself walking... It was still light out surprisingly as the days fall away too fast, by 5pm it’s like midnight out. I happened upon Lisa. I think I could be her some days, sitting next to her begging on a street corner so we could buy a packet of cigarettes together and split the ends.

Lisa was anxious she kept telling me she had to go change her coins into a note to make it something more manageable. I imagine it is less embarrassing at the tobacconist than to arrive splaying a mountain of dirty silver coins on to the countertop. Furthermore I imagine it would be to buy those cheap and nasty ones. The Chinese cigarettes that feel like you have smoked asbestos filled fibreglass through a plastic straw. 

That afternoon was different an older gentleman was passing by and recognised Lisa. He came and sat in between us on the bench. Purposefully he didn't say his name and he wasn't letting me in on it either.

He was well dressed - a navy blue blazer-white shirt and leather boating shoes. I was confused with what sort of pants he was wearing. Until Lisa posed the question, “why he had blue ski pants on?” He replied that he “slept outside these days.”  It was winter so he came cut-corrected in his ski apparel and added that he had made in the passing days, maybe weeks months or even years “the decision to live in his clothes.” I liked this guy.

He told us that he had to go into the bottle shop and would be back. Lisa then left to go make other peoples small coined offerings into a note. The gentleman returned, I told him Lisa would be back shortly. He sat down next to me. I asked him what he had bought; he told me it was a bottle of, “Southern Comfort.”

It only seemed apt all so fitting living in the city of the South under these southern skies and it was that other word as well that hovered and resonated in the air- comfort. It seemed to spell it all out for me – my mood.

I guess it is what we all look for is comfort. To fill that void inside us that we no longer fill with the love of god and he had found his in his glass bottle filled up with amber liqueur like spirits. The effect temporary never permanent always wearing off. Perhaps like returning to his mother’s breast nuzzling into the warm and golden licks. I wish I could do that give into something completely with disregard for all other things. I have behaved like this on occasion and believe in addiction there is a relinquishing of living in prescribed modern terms but it is a love affair or liaison with nihilism that ends in fatalism giving into oblivion but I argue that we all must die someday.

I always imagined I would meet my end by being unceremoniously hit by a car. One night in a drunken state I found the location. I recall the lure of the flashing lights of the heavy traffic on the corner of Beauchamp and Oxford Streets. That night on that corner it seemed all so tempting to do such a simple act as to put one foot in front of the other and step into the heavy moving metal.

It was obvious the gentleman had a gambling problem and was on the drink as well. I imagine black jack not the misery of the poker machines with their flashing lights and buzz-cock-high-pitched- ringing-in-your-ears-giving-you-a-headache. He took the large hip flask sized glass bottle out of the paper bag wrapping and slowly unscrewed the lid. He then mentioned if he drank it all in one he would be paralytic he snarled a laugh. He had enough social graces to say, “Cheers,” to me and made a gesture with the bottle up towards the sky. I said, "Santé," he then usurped me and one better and said, "Saluté." 

He placed the bottle to his mouth, his southern comfort, his mother’s glass nipple, his comfort. He titled his head back slightly he didn’t gulp or swallow the amber bourboneque-syrup just flowed down trickling down his throat. He had mastered this motion, this ritual, his throat didn't hesitate either it was waiting for this moment.

I felt I was a party to his misdeeds and impending paralysis. I couldn't stop myself I had to say something I said “woo-oh.” He stopped and looked at me. I looked at the bottle he had drunk about one-eighth.

I felt relieved in that moment that Lisa had returned. They now both felt awkward around me and left together. Lisa hadn't made enough money for a $5 note. I couldn't follow them they were trying to get away from me for fucks sake. I knew all too well that I was not low brow enough to beg with them too well dressed with my hair still wet hair from the shower.

At least they could see till the bottom of the bottle or until they made enough coins to make that five dollar note in their hand and they would have company. Unlike me they both knew exactly where they were going. I knew as well, the corner of High Street and Belmore Road just outside the Night Owl. It was obvious that I wasn't invited. Evidently too much like a tourist in their waking world.

I keep coming back to this point that I write in circles but always return to the fact that writing from the heart will inevitably be messy, anarchic, chaotic and in disarray however in trying to make sense of it all when the smoke clears I must continue to write but not like a woman - like a motherfucker. 

In Search of the Prols in a Hipster Wasteland

A city’s skyline forged on banalities a true representation of what runs this town. As Marx put it, "money turns everything into a commodity that can be bought and sold. All other values are defeated - honour, integrity, truth, justice, loyalty, even blood kin. Nothing remains but filthy lucre."

I went out late night moonlight rolling out before me in search of derive in search of some of life’s truths I came up trumps. This city has spent decades trying to erase the face of the poor and now even the characters, the true individuals have been erased designed out pushed so far out of sight all that is left is a wasteland of hipsters. Who the fuck wants these pro-conformist–pseudo-counter-culture-profiteers that are or esteem to be the moneyed contradiction that they are. 

Truth be told I was out in search of the prols. I believe the term is called going slumming. How could I forget this town has no recognisable venue for them to inhabit all there endroits have been razed to the ground, renovated beyond recognition or turned into upmarket apartments. I question if these places still exist perhaps only in memories glimpsed in my youth.

All in bed at 9 or glued to the TV screen still tut tut tut off to bed in time to make the daily commute. 

Fuck this postcard town. Fuck everyone in it who is sleepwalking through this city languishing in its ever present.

I felt defeated last night the only signs of life were the police siren whirling giving me a head ache. I understood why men in this city glass, king hit and kick each other, it is to feel alive. To see blood surge and bring the shock of life into vivid being. I am now assured this city  has no heart beat anymore just the ring of the till. The prols are sleeping. This city is expensive. The only light on in my street was from the bedroom of the video game addict that lives above my apartment and his occasional, "fuck you!" yelled at his television screen.

Killing Time

I think to myself I could do with another cigarette.

I thought I may be able to drink my way out of this mess. If I were in Paris I could mourn communally at a brasserie with those that piccole tout les soirs killing time and in that atmosphere all is excused with a drink in my hand the wine a substance delicate and subtle.

However here I am left to drink alone in this weekday room never knowing a Sunday. It is more dramatic to sip alone from une coupe de champagne the word much more flat in English a champagne saucer which I occasionally spill as I sway. The radio playing in the background another dreary jazz songs plays with only the blue notes. I dance alone my mind somewhere else nearing oblivion, a cigarette in my hand the smoke making coils in the air. It is with wine drunk slowly and alone that everything is excused and everything is forgotten. Tonight my mind is high in the air up above floating with the smoke from the stem of my cigarette.

Ella

I am listening to the radio as I always have. Dead jazz singers eyes on the world proof nothing much has changed, their ghostly singing ringing out in my apartment where time stands still. Ella gently whispering in my ear that help is on the way from the beyond.

Allez à la découverte de Nao

Translation Letter Nao

            Allez-Allez-Allons-y-!-Allez-Allez-Allez-Allez-Vous-Allez-Nous-Allons-On-y-va  Allez-!

Allez à la découverte de Nao

Allez-Nao,

Comment vas-tu ? Mon amie, merci pour ton message. Alors je ne suis pas en Italie ! Je t’explique quand je vais revenir à Sydney. I found the ‘allez Nao’ in Le Parisienne a newspaper similar to the Sydney Telegraph. I found it in a seedy bar I frequent now whilst in Paris in effect I stole it. GiGi the proprietor of the establishment he named Le Belgerac on rue Saint Lazare close to the Metro St-Georges. There is a wooden tambourine hanging on the wooden liquor cabinetry. GiGi told me that it a gift from the Libertine himself Peter Dougherty another one of his regular clientele. It adds to the idea of just how lowlife the brasserie really is. I like GiGi even when he slips his hand around my waist or tries for a wet coquine kiss on the cheek. The other barkeep and regulars call him ‘le requin,’ the shark. Today he asked me where my typewriter was.

The weather today has returned to the days that are the joys of summer. That soft rose coloured light that gives a great ambiance especially on a Sunday, sipping on a Rosé from Provence with lipstick the colour of Bourgogne glossy on my lips. I actually felt loved today. I’ve stopped living in a Fellini film it is more of a Woody Allen classic with a Parisian backdrop. It’s all an abstraction anyway, a live-action film version of reality. I felt set adrift when I left Sydney and set sail for Europe, then shipwrecked in France now a return to being more at ease.

Is one person enough, all you need? Where ever you may be that can give you safe harbour to love you in their way?

There is the local market square near La Marie of the 18éme there is a fleuriste that only sells roses in all colours. It is beautiful rows upon rows of vases filled with roses in abundance €15- for ten long stemmed objects of beauty and the perfume that radiates from that shop is exquisite. La boucherie when I buy my cured meats for a platter of charcuterie or thick pieces of entrecôte has whole rabbits hanging in a row intact, all the fur on them right down to Peter Rabbits fluffy little tail. I find this shocking yet strangely adorable at the same time. The poissonnerie or fish monger in the same square was selling fish heads. I saw a sword fish head with the whole sword pointing out at me. I find these delightful far removed from the plastic packaging of the supermarkets back home! Et Alors Moi et Driss have a lot of private jokes we share, one of the charms of having a lover.

I would like to stay so I will remain here longer than originally planned. Like all places on a hot sun drenched day you feel like you spirit is lifted out of the monotonous grey. That the sun holds up your heart greets you. It kisses you on both sides of your face and at sunset on your forehead to say bonsoir or bonne nuit and hopefully à demain! It will be high summer in Sydney when I return and I can see the sea again. I feel à l’aise here now. I do not wish to call this place home but to come home to this man Driss.

fayRo3e.

Heroin

There is a drug that contains momentary happiness it is called heroin too scared of what level of Dante’s hell I will find myself in if I try it to just obliterate the mess I have got myself into.

I Felt My Heart Beating

I went to therapy again today she said I have just been trying to survive for months now and kept myself from touching the void as I have termed it. She told me to put my hand on the part of my body where the pain radiates from and let my hands warmth heal that part of me. Her parting words were, "it is a tough world out there." I thought of these words on the bus on the way home as my mind edged toward thoughts of cutting my own throat. I placed my left hand against the nape of my neck. I felt my heart beating. The tears came rolling down my face. The lady in front of me turned around and asked me for directions. I did not have the answer, she apologized and turned around. The banality of life surfaced in that moment and the thought passes. 

Hiroshima Mon Amour

I bought matching his and her kimonos, they are in the style known as the yukata to be exact, hoping this purchase would be some sort of modern prayer that I put out to the universe that my man will come home to me one day and play out the following scene.

I imagine that we lye freshly bathed in the morning side by side on my bed wrapped in the navy blue and white Japanese robes sipping coffee with wet hair dripping before opening our yukata kimonos to partially reveal our caramel naked bodies against the indigo cloth to make love once against in the morning baptizing our traditional Japanese Sunday morning best.

Chasing the Almighty Dollar

Are you chasing the almighty dollar? I am, not because I want to but because I have to. We all do. It’s nice to eat.

“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

-Bukowski

Shouting at the Explicit Sky

I have to write my way out of this to claw my way up with words strung together as knots on a rope out of this dark box inside my soul which I have crawled into. Even though it is warm there I feel I am sat hunched on an uncomfortable wooden chair with screws and nails digging into me as my own perverse version of an execution chair. I need to lift my head high up to see out of this dark place and find my way back to you. Resolute against the darkness the shadows that haunt my tortured pose. I have been left alone too long and begin shouting at the explicit sky.

Hipsterburbia - City of Vain

I feel the void inside me... I fill it with caffeine, cigarettes and alcohol. My lover would think it is because he is not beside me, my mother says it is my lack of subbmission my godlessness that just leaves me unfulfilled.

Both god and love don’t live here in this city.

I seem to believe it is Sydney a young city that deprives me of a wholeness this tired deadbeat soulless ville, where people stare through me, the crowds with their dead eyes or heads bowed looking at their Jesus phones. The familiarity that breeds contempt even as I watch Chippendale rise again the cranes that push and pull the sky closer, skeletons that will haunt the skyline for centuries to come. I feel defeated by my city. I will have to retreat the battle lost long ago. I wish I came of age in a simpler time where my peers the designerati do not have to exchange tips of where to buy discount fresh produce.

We design, plan, approve buildings and apartments we cannot afford to live in or speculate upon and would not choose to regardless of price as they are banal hideous forms. We all know these forms have more to do with filling the client’s pockets than the slogans that we write about such as lifestyle, urbanism and sustainability. Through the lens of marketing the way many words become unrecognisable fallen by the wayside, to the point they have lost all meaning they are just empty they hold no promise so now these words repel me.

I bide my time here waiting for the day I too am pushed out and beyond by a word I learnt at university - gentrification - a form or urbanism much to do with winners and losers.

One day I to will be pushed out not made out of the right stuff in this shrewd city that I call home. There were no answers at university to the questions I posed of this type of socio-spatial economic restructuring and I do not see any answers anytime over the horizon or beyond the cranes that rise over Chippendale.