I haven’t weighed myself on a scale for 25 years.
I didn’t need too.
My weight was manageable.
Or so I thought.
Yet the vanity side of me was scared to death of the scales.
It's like a smoker who has his morning coughing fit.
Is that blood I just coughed out?
A furtive look, looks fine by me.
Being overweight is about being in ignorant bliss.
It was a case of what you don’t know won’t hurt you.
But boy did I know.
How much did I really weigh?
Surely not over 90 kilograms.
And a lot of that weight must be muscle mass.
And we all know muscle weighs more than fat.
Surely the fat was just from the two litres of milk I had been consuming most nights over the last two months.
Who doesn't go through their dairy stages?
I showed restraint by skipping the cheese.
Some called it bulking up, I personally called it a treat before retiring to bed for the night.
Milk went so well with cereals.
A glass of milk over lunch, magic,
Another litre over dinner, sublime.
I know, I can hear you saying, but wasn't it a bit excessive.
Didn't Oscar Wilde say nothing 'exceeds like excess.'
Didn't he also say he had nothing else to declare (he had already drunk the bottle of absinthe) but his genius?
Of course he did.
I've used both those lines passing through Australian Customs.
'Oops, that's a high-level security search.'
Never really helped my cause.
I suppose that was the point of quoting Oscar Wilde.
It was when total strangers started calling me ‘Big Boy’ and ‘Fat Cunt’ that I thought perhaps I had weight issues.
But like most of my problems they were easily brushed aside.
I’m already a big framed Eastern European.
The last time I weighed in at 114 three weeks ago at the clinic.
My doctor was reluctant to prescribe me Duromine when I asked a year ago but eventually caved in after seeing the kilos skyrocket on the scales.
God bless his Bulgarian soul who was born in Syria.
I was also suffering from fatigue, listless and lacking motivation.
Those cum stains on my t-shirt and tracksuit pants aren't really a good look.
And wearing black only emphasised the 'I don't give a fuck' state of mind I had.
Duromine is basically speed.
It’s marketed under many names, I guess after it gets a bad reputation from junkies just like myself who abuse it.
It’s also called phentermine and branded with intergalactic spacy names like 'Acxion' and 'Adipex' and of course Duromine which I'll go the long mile to down grown grade it's house wife diet pill reputation to what it really is, a cheap thrill.
Don’t be fooled, it’s still the same formula that was used in the 50’s.
The version I’m taking is slow release.
Nothing like the handful of pink and whites I took on the streets of Bangkok before a night out in the 'Go- Go Pits'.
Which is why I open up the plastic capsule and pour out the content in neat lines on the table and snort as much of it as I can, then I mop up the rest with my fingers, licking those crystals into my system.
It beats waiting four hours for it to dissolve in your stomach and enter your blood stream.
Trust me, it's a sight to behold.
Haven't put a pill up my ass yet.
It would be a waist if I had to shit it out.
I'm taking laxatives too.
Anything to lose weight and loosen up the bowels, I'll take because science says so.
Another reason why I break up the capsule is that the plastic it's made from can't be good for me.
I don’t like eating plastic capsules at the best of times.
Unless of course they are loaded with high grade speed.
I also want to see what I'm imbibing.
It's the curious chemist inside me wanting to explore his meds.
Duromine consists of fine white powder, in smaller amounts, signalling it's the good stuff; while the coarse brown powder is the binder that takes it time binding with blood, making sure the effects of the pill lasts all fucking day long.
It really takes about four hours to kick in and start suppressing your appetite.
I've had my ups and downs on the first week of using Duromine.
On the first night I wanked for about eight hours.
Alright, slight exaggeration.
Maybe it was for twenty minutes and maybe I didn’t even wank.
Okay, I'll rephrase that, I DID NOT WANK.
AND IF I DID, that soon stopped too.
It’s very hard to keep a hard-on on it.
You really need help from either Cialis, Viagra, or a whore who does great blow jobs.
Since taking the pill, three weeks into it, I watch my diet. I only eat salads and vegetables.
I’ve stopped raiding the fridge late at night.
I know, sounds ideal.
I’ll tell you anything to make me look good.
One of my weaknesses that contributed to my very fleshy love handles was
sugar and pasta and ice-cream.
SPI’s are a lethal combination.
Fat thrives on it.
Diabetes feasts on it.
And I just fucking adore it.
I was a two packet a day smoker too.
It did nothing to keep the weight off.
That’s another myth debunked.
As I said, everyone was calling me ‘Big Boy’ and 'Fat Cunt.'
They were just too fucking lazy to remember my name and most likely crack heads who relied on meth to keep their weight down.
I had been setting up concerts that come to town for the last ten years.
I started late in life.
At forty, I was humping road cases.
At 52, I was still humping road cases until a pandemic scared off all the big acts.
And I didn’t break my virginity until I was 21.
A late bloomer?
I’ve been trying to play catch up ever since
So I’ve got muscles too, somewhere hidden in the fat.
I just wasn’t aware how much fat.
According to a scan at the gym which I joined a month ago, I’ve got forty percent muscle mass.
Sounds impressive but when you put the fat percentage next to the muscle mass, you realise just how far you have slipped into middle age spread.
More fat means more muscle to carry it.
Sounds bleak, doesn’t it?
The point I’m making is that there is a science to losing weight.
No one can do it with will power alone.
I certainly can’t.
And why would you bother when you got science to help you out, that’s my outlook on life.
‘I don’t take drugs,’ I hear often.
So then why are you popping antibiotic pills like they are candy, is my usual response.
Because they most likely had a serious case of gonorrhoea.
That usually shuts them up.
‘It was chlamydia and mind your own fucking business.’
There’s always a smartass.
Some people just can’t be saved.
Dieting is hard work.
Being on Duromine is a trip within itself.
Only the brave and hard-core drug abusers need apply for a course of these special diet pills.
On Duromine, I listen to a lot of techno music.
I listened to it before I was on the diet pills.
I used to abuse Tramadol.
I'm talking ten capsules a session.
I abuse Tramadol.
That sounds better.
I'm abusing Duromine.
I'm hoping my doctor isn't reading this.
I still have an untouched bottle of Valium you prescribed; I tell him.
He has seen it all.
I guess he likes my approach, just as dishonest as most of the junkies who enter his clinic, but at least believable.
Tramadol does stuff to you.
You can drink and fuck all night on it and still not blow your load.
Listening to tunes on this synthetic heroine was seriously a joyous occasion.
I used to scratch myself and have vivid waking dreams.
The colours were soothing.
I think this is what the poets of the 18th century was talking about.
Byron, Coleridge and De Quincy were big fans of opiates.
They wrote great pomes and prose on it.
Nothing like that for me.
I was just too busy enjoying the euphoria the drug is famous for.
I’d say methadone is much better.
It’s just so hard to get.
The Germans know their drugs.
It’s no coincidence that the best techno music comes out of Germany.
The silly things you pick up on a serious weight loss regime.
It’s great being in Australia.
I was telling a young lad at the gym, that Australia is the only country where you can score legal speed and get paid to exercise.
Dole bludgers we are called.
I’ve written books on this stipend.
The secret is to find a doctor who can write you a medical report.
I’ve been writing books for the last two years thanks to my doctor.
Obviously, he has a literary streak he’d love to explore if he wasn’t too busy being a doctor.
It was if Tramadol tapped into the kaleidoscope in my brain.
People talk about the ‘third’ eye.
That’s bull shit.
Om mani padme hum.
More bullshit.
What they meant was that we all have a kaleidoscope in our brains.
It just needs tapping into with good drugs.
Meditation is never going to take you there.
Trust me I have tried.
All I got was eaten alive by mosquitos and cramped legs.
Another myth debunked.
Another reason for losing weight, I want to get the wolf hounds off the trail.
I’ve got my teeth done.
I had twenty crowns done in Manila.
That makes 24 crowns, the total of my teeth.
But it’s the two canines that are causing me serious problems.
Currently I’m getting root canals.
They were only half done, said my dentist.
Explains the inflamed gums and swelling of the face.
Abbesses, they are just killers.
Am I digressing?
It seems like it.
I like the idea of going to seed and then doing a bit of gardening and coming good.
It’s like also looking back at yourself in the mirror.
Instead of seeing a youthful 24-year-old looking back at me, it’s a 52-year overweight old man. He isn’t looking back at me. He’s scowling at me. He’s saying, ‘What the fuck do you want.’ And I’m too timid to say he’s obese.
I have muscle memory.
I trained in weights, swam and ran, in my early twenties.
But as soon as I started traveling, I couldn’t be bothered training.
Fast forward over two decades, and this train wreck has arrived.
It’s going to take some panel beating, some good drugs and discipline, but I think we'll get there.
Me, Myself and I are very disciplined that way.
And if we don't get there, it's been great being fucked up for the past four months on lab grade crack.
I’m hitting the weights big time.
I have a gym membership.
I’m on track to finding the new and better me.
Right?
As I said, I’m hitting the weights, getting physiotherapy and getting my teeth done.
A trifecta you may ask.
I recently got whiplash after being king hit in the workplace.
Rosie knows all this.
She is my neighbour.
I tell her everything.
She’s a good listener.
A widow and no spring chicken, Rosie was born in the late 1940’s and refuses to give up the ghost.
‘What do you mean, ‘give up the ghost,’ says Rosie as a mock form of admonishment.
I tell Rosie that I’m sure Big Corporations have been lacing my food with Estrogen.
Before I started the diet, I continued, ‘I was wearing training bras.’
I pull up my shirt and show her the stain lines.
‘They aren’t stain line,’ says Rosie, ‘it’s where the training bra has rubbed on your nipples.’
Rosie has a kinky side and confirms it with a wink and a smile exposing her hybrid of lower false teeth and jagged and jutting upper yellowish teeth.
‘Only fucking with you.’
Rosie suggests I get on with the narrative.
‘How about you fast forward it nearly four months,’ she says.
That can easily be done, I say.
But what about the previous four months, we just can’t skip it, can we?
‘All will be revealed in the future narrative, which when you think about it, is the present narrative.’
Rosie is so intuitive, sometimes and she’s full of good old fashion common sense.
‘Not bad for a girl who never went to school?’
Not bad at all Rosie.
Rosie says don’t get too skinny.
‘People will think you are a wimp.’
I just like the idea of a total make over.
Losing weight is a big one.
Getting teeth done, another one.
Confidence, maybe I have too much of it.
Surely, I must be bipolar.
Is there good medication for that shit?
Once I get those two root canals finished, I might look at the crowns the dentist is offering.
What if you break a tooth getting a crown off, I asked my dentist?
He just wouldn’t do something so silly like that.
He’s almost offended by the question.
‘Good question,’ he said, and nothing else was explored.
I suppose if I can cough up the $15 grand, he’ll talk teeth, aesthetics, you fucking name it.
Until then, I should just continue acting the crack head that I am.
I’m no stranger to starving.
I did it in the 90s in San Francisco and Bangkok and the 2000s and 2010s both in Sydney and Perth and Bangkok again.
It never gets easy.
I’m sure I’ve written about this before.
And I’m sure I’m going to write about it again.
Everyone goes through their ‘hunger’ period.
Mine was epic.
And now I’m paying for pills to lose weight.
I know, just doesn’t make sense, does it.
But it’s how it was.
I had lost my passport.
My lifeline to Commonwealth Coin had been cut off.
Basically I was stranded.
I didn’t see it coming.
I was just too busy fucking Thai cunt.
Oh, juicy cunt at that.
And so accessible.
I bet you had to pay for everyone of those fucks, said my conscious.
Smart ass.
But yes, and that’s where all my money went.
So having a passport and a hard copy of an airline ticket about to expire stolen, I couldn’t even raise funds to go to the Australian Embassy and Air Italia.
Very soon I'd be in the cradle of poverty, getting a good feeling how it was like to be on the other side of the tracks in these third world countries I had been visiting from 1994- 95, this time not as a tourist but as a vagabond.
Let the hunger games begin, I thought, always one to rise to a challenge.
I had no idea it would take nearly a decade to get enough cash to fly back to Australia.
Still as far as challenges go, I think I passed this one.
Now at my age, I’ve quit smoking and stopped wasting money on whores and flights to Asia.
Whoring and Asia, are the clues.
I’ve spunked my life savings into these honey pots.
Now I have money.
The only problem I have is scoring the Duromine.
One tablet is never enough after taking it for three months.
You need two, or three of those babies to get the same buzz you did when you took them at the beginning.
I roamed the streets.
Aimlessly, I roamed, looking for a fuck.
I was just one walking hard on.
I was skinnier than a ya ba addict from the slums of Kong Toey.
I even had the body of a Thai person.
The women fucking loved it.
I was one of them.
What they didn’t know was that I was the only farang starving in the kingdom.
I was attacked in the workplace.
We had a nickname for him.
Lee Kuan Fucking Yew.
I put on a few kilograms and put the bite on my doctor.
‘Duromine, or bust,’ I said.
It did sound convincing.
I had put on a couple of kilos.
It had nothing to do with Post Distress Disorder.
The truth was I packed on the pounds from drinking two liters of milk a day.
God bless dairy products.
It did the trick.
I was obese anyway.
Even I could see that.
Borderline diabetes, a hernia ready to explode and a bad knee,
I was a prime candidate for losing weight.
Being a newcomer to dieting, I only wanted to do it once.
And get it right.
I didn’t know anything about Duromine.
So the doctor prescribed one script for 30 milligrams.
I was on my way.
Dieting here we come.
A six pack would follow.
All I have to do is take the pill and watch the pounds peel off.
I had been walking all year.
The only time I got down to 107 was when I had diarrhea.
Now I was 114.
My weight increase began about the time I started working for Lee Kuan Fucking Yew.
For two months he ran me into the ground.
My body responded by putting on weight.
He made me feel like a useless piece of shit.
If only he knew he’d be funding my weight loss.
But I won’t get ahead of myself.
Every crossroad and by road leads to Lee Kuan Fucking Yew.
I should really dedicate this book to him.
Without him king hitting me in the workplace, I’d still be sitting on 112 kilos
and walking for an hour every evening.
If I told you I was two digits, sitting on 99 kilos, you wouldn’t believe me.
I wouldn’t believe it if you told me this three months ago.
Duromine isn’t for everybody.
Losing weight is just plain hard work.
But if you can’t get it up and even the sight of yourself scares you in the mirror,
it’s time to take action.
And that’s just what I did.
I was working with a Macedonian selling Telco.
‘The slanty eyed cunt.’
He just didn’t like Lee Kuan Fucking Yew one bit.
He was a sales rep.
Over time I’d won his confidence.
A real lovely man, in the end I cracked his code
and when he saw the real me, I couldn’t do wrong in his eyes.
I’m a wog boy at heart.
‘Why do you let him stomp all over you?’
You’ll see very soon.
There is a methodology in how I work.
Give someone enough rope, they’ll eventually hang themselves in ecstasy.
In the end, I was working as little as possible.
This job was a sinking ship.
The sales rep had been cheated two thousand dollars by the chink.
‘And I’ll get my money’s worth somehow,’ he said,
and went to the boss’s desk and put the phone down his crutch and rubbed it up deep inside his bum cheeks.
‘That’s five dollars off the debt,’ he said.
That day I was laughing uncontrollably.
Lee Kuan Fucking Yew has been with Commander for fifteen years
and doesn’t like anyone disrespecting him.
He knew my laughing outbursts were about him,
but he couldn’t pinpoint it.
So, he did only what he could do, get the situation back into
control by king hitting me in the parking lot.
‘Get all you can from the creep, get a police report,
he’s left himself wide open.’
And I did just that.
‘I’m not a bad guy,’ said Mr. Telco, who asked me over to his desk, about forty minutes after he king hit me.
He wanted to show me an apartment which he thought I should buy.
I was going to work for Lee Kuan Fucking Yew for the rest of my life, he said.
He had already given me that assurance, after his employee of
fifteen years lost her house from a fire without insurance.
He was moving her along before the corpse had retained room temperature.
She was nearly sixty-five, very matronly and Hungarian born.
This showed me what Lee Kuan Fucking Yew was capable of.
Bring it on, I thought, as I began to ham up the situation.
I nearly got crushed by two stages.
I was in the middle and they were being pushed on wheels for joining.
A close call.
Knocked the wind out of me.
What the fuck.
I set up international concerts.
It was U2’s Joshua Tree concert.
Lee Kuan Fucking Yew’s push was soft and effete.
But boy did I ham it up.
Past injuries, new injuries, fuck and the phycological damage.
And Hollywood actors think they are only capable of winning Oscars.
So that’s a bit of background.
Not long after he pushed me, he must have been feeling bad.
‘Come over here.’
He always called me over to his desk for pep talks.
He did the talking down when I was sitting at my desk.
‘This apartment could be yours,’ he said.
Mm, yes it could be.
‘Well you’ll be working for me for life, so it’s very much in the realms of can do.’
Mm, I muttered, trying to sound grateful.
He was the best bullshitter under the sun.
‘I’m old school,’ he said when I first met him.
I didn’t even really want the job.
It’s that he insisted I see him.
He had no idea where our working relationship would take us.
I love good sport like the best of them, I thought, a
as I pretended to show interest in the apartment, he was showing me for sale.
‘You are kind and merciful,’ I eventually said,
hamming it up a bit with this tag on,
‘you only meet one Lee Kuan Fucking Yew in a lifetime.’
From the look on his face, he couldn’t decide if I was taking the piss out of him or being sincere.
‘And who is Lee Kuan Fucking Yew anyway?’ he asked.
I was being sincere.
I was going to screw him for all he was worth.
Apparently, he owned seven properties and an office block.
At least that was something to work with.
Listen, if you may, I liked LT.
He was a fucking crook covering up with respectability of owning his own
Telco Business Centre.
‘Listen,’ he would say over the phone in the morning to his clients,
’I think you have been downloading too much porn.’
Of course, he was only joking.
I heard him use that line at least three times since I was working in his claustrophobic office in an apartment block, which he apparently owned.
He could never afford to buy that, let alone seven houses and another office block, by selling mobile plans.
He exuded of crookery.
He was a thief, a con man, a liar, a survivor and most likely a closet faggot.
He was a condescending little prick.
I only liked his money.
And his coffee.
He was proud of his little espresso coffee machine.
Nescafe is better, but I won’t say no to a pod coffee.
So I drank as much as I could, and more.
He was paying for it and I was getting him leads.
As the weeks went by, his complaints got louder.
I just drank more coffee.
At this rate he’d bend or break.
And I wasn’t going to fuck him in the toilet if you know what I mean.
Even though he asked me to clean up some pubis hair on the floor.
I wasn’t falling for that trick.
I’m an old hand at telemarketing.
I know all the tricks of the trade.
I can make a weak lead stand up strong with a hard on.
I don’t know what to call him.
The case is still unfolding.
He doesn’t know it, but his assault charges just got escalated to
obstruction of justice and lying to police.
‘He pestered me to write up a fake witness report,’ said the Macedonian
sales rep.
I was glad to have his loyalty.
Old Mr. Telco loved putting words into other people’s mouths.
‘Awake to that game a long time ago,’ said the sales rep,
when I asked him, he had told Mr. Old School that I was vaping most of the time.
‘Never said such a thing,’ he said.
It was us against him and we had formed a strong alliance
over the two months.
Don’t hear or see him.
Last I heard from him, he was having an operation.
I’d say he’s left Mr. Old School.
I never got my commission for sales.
‘If you don’t trust me, then you can fuck off.’
That set off Mr. Old School when earlier on I asked him for my commission.
It was a small ‘set him off.’
The bigger ones were to come.
‘I’m taking fifty dollars out of your salary for the coffee.’
Go for it, you thieving cunt, like how you cut my salary by five dollars an hour.
Look at the bigger picture.
Do you think you can pin him for something bigger?
He didn’t trust me.
One day he checked my bag to make sure I hadn’t stolen his coffee pods.
I only drink cheap instant coffee at home.
Two months of Mr. Old School was enough to write a book on him.
A lot went down.
Sales reps need telemarketers.
Especially in a time of a pandemic.
I had it pretty easy.
No face appointments, so the five leads a day were easy work.
And not even qualified.
Just a follow up phone call.
But back to the diet.
All this shit with Mr. Old School happened in May.
It’s now nearly October and I haven’t seen any compensation.
The police never got back to me when I sent them supporting evidence.
But that’s all just periphery shit.
On the main stage is my weight loss program.
You’ll see some same players who have been there for the ride since it began.
Like Andy, the Vietnamese chemist, and his boss Danial,
Mr. Insane in the Ukraine.
Or my doctor, Dr. Kilaji, whose medical report initially allowed the
police to press charges against Mr. Old School.
Then there is Niaz, part owner with Danial of the main branch I do all my shopping.
He has his other branch in the Health Provider district, where I see my dentist, my physio and for a brief time, my Fijian Doctor, of Indian descent.
I also would go to Daya Scan, for scans and ultrasounds.
Just up the road is where Wayne lives.
He got a triple bypass recently and the guy I was staying with who held me hostage is a ten-percenter abo.
On Duromine, I fear no one.
If only Mr.-I-am-Only-the-Driver could see me now.
I’m a certified meth head.
And I buy it legally.
And as Andy says it’s not addictive, ‘doesn’t draw upon dopamine supplies.’
Twice I’ve quit and twice I’ve got back on it.
I haven’t reached my ideal weight.
I’ve been off it for two days over the last ten weeks, and I didn’t even get a headache off it.
I dreamt that Mr. Old School came to visit me.
I told Andy about how he tried to book an appointment with a wealthy Vietnamese client.
He spent an hour on the phone bragging about how good he was, how he used to build apartments funded with Triad money in Wuhan and that he would bring a nice little Vietnamese to lunch with him named Jenny.
‘The Vietnamese businessman took the free lunch, fucked Jenny but didn’t sign the contract.’
Andy laughed.
He also signed my Compensation form.
He likes my updates.
I live in the chemist.
Maybe it’s the fun drugs they stock.
Who knows?
Or the sincere service I get, all the time.
Standards never drop.
Small spender, big spender, they’ll bend over backwards to help you.
I said to Andy not to fuck with the Vietnamese.
‘They defeated America, then later China.’
Andy knows I know my stuff.
My landlady is Vietnamese.
I have to know my history.
Andy used to charge me two dollars to sign forms.
Now he does it for free.
I guess I’m local now.
Having a surrogate grandfather who was a chemist also helps.
I just know how nice and kind chemists are.
I had visited that chemist once a week for over 18 months for antibiotics.
That’s how I found Dr. Kilaji.
My left canine tooth was playing up.
It was one of twenty crowns I had done in Manila the year before.
I had no idea it was an infection in a root canal that had only been half done.
I just assumed food had entered the gap and caused an infection.
That it was right up in my sinuses and caused my face to swell up like an elephant man,
I had no idea how bad it really was.
I wouldn’t know how bad it was until Mr. Old School king hit me and
I put on weight and I got prescribed Duromine.
On Duromine, I was a can-do man.
My wallet opened up.
A month into Duromine, I started root canals on my two canine teeth.
I’m onto the last tooth and need two more treatments.
I have had ten physio sessions.
I’ve joined a gym.
I’ve lost 15 kilograms.
I’m plateauing.
I’ve jumped ahead here.
Where is the suspense?
I need to continue the treatment, said Andy.
He doesn’t want me wasting all the good work.
So I popped another 30 milligrams that evening.
We all need support.
My chemists want to see a lean and mean version of myself.
I want to see a lean mean version of myself.
Three laxatives later, it was a fine shit.
Too think and leaky to be of any discomfort.
I told my trainers at the gym I’m off Duromine.
‘Why do you tell people you are on Duromine?’ asked my doctor.
Because I’m writing a book.
He seemed pleased with that answer.
It forces people to judge me.
Then I can judge them back accordingly.
No, no, that’s not my intention.
I just want tension.
You’d be surprised who are on diet pills.
More so than ever with Instagram perfection, we are striving to look better ourselves.
And Duromine is our filter, touching up the love handles, taking out the bloating in the face and erasing the double chin forever.
Sigh.
I still fantasise about Congo Bongo.
I’m on the phone to Rosie, since I was raced out by the Africans.
Yes, the other one was a female from Kenya.
‘And I would love nothing better than to smash his head on the pavement and make Bongo omelettes for breakfast.’
Rosie laughs. She knows I'm serious about it.
Rosie, did you know that Bongo came to Australia in 2007?
And that he was slated to go to America under an Obama deal?
'Hmmm.'
But then Australia agreed to take a new batch of refugees from Rwanda.
It consisted mostly of preachers and social workers who were caught between the cross fires of the liberating armies encroaching from the border countries of Burundi, Congo, and Uganda.
‘You don’t know who I am.’
That's what Bongo said to me after I told him to stop slamming the door.
‘I remember it very well,’ said Rosie, on the end of a phone, a great listener with all the right responses. I suspect she has a crush on me.
'And I've seen a gang of these liberation fighters outside my house.'
Yes, Bongo and his friends.
Darker than the ace of Spade with District 7, 8 and 9 their new turf.
Rosie tell me her husband Melvin has been dead over thirty years now. He use to be an accountant on Christmas Island.
And now I’m the only single male that visits her.
She has the Indians swarming, but she’s not interested in those snakes..
'Bongo was in the same division as the Rwandan Liberation Army,' I continued, a terrorist group that targeted American tourists.
Mr. T was second in charge.
Do you remember that sitcom in the eighties Rosie?
Yes, I do.
Of course she didn’t but I’ll show her on Youtube later to prod her memory.
Mr T was an African America, or Negro who acted on the television series The A Team. And I know for a fact after Michael Jackson, Mr. T is the next most loved American of all time for Malaysians.
‘Ahhh,’ emits Rosie.
So she's not asleep.
She’s been caught out and knows it.
She likes to tease me as well.
She knows a lot more than she ever lets on.
I just happen to know she’s clued in.
Bongo loves dressing up as an American gangster.
He's a spitting image of Mr. T.
He wears lots of fake gold chains, crosses and baggy gangster pants.
Bongo is smart but plays dumb.
'I know everything,' he says.
He thinks he has a direct line to god.
He is an evangelist after all.
That's what he calls himself on his twitter handle.
A great cover, it fools the do goodie Christians every time.
‘It’s obvious,’ said Rosie, who has woken up and wants to get me off the line, ‘that the UNHCR faked his documents and facilitated his entry into Australia.’
Totally agree, Rosie.
You don’t live on Christmas Island without learning a thing or two about refugees.
‘I fucking cleaned their latrines.’
God bless you Rosie, we’ll talk soon.
Hey Rosie, how are you?
Sorry I'm recording you.
I'm recording this conversation now say hello to the recorder.
'Say hello to the recorder.'
Not literally...
Sorry I wasn't being rude, but I just lost my recording.
Rosie really doesn’t give a flying fuck.
What matters is that I’m the phone, talking to her.
She’s a lonely lady who needs contact.
Even a phone call keeps her happy.
She actually loves phone calls.
She was born to be on the phone.
Even I know that.
And I’m a pretty long talker too.
As she said, ‘get on tell the story.’
It was Rosie’s story just as much as mine.
I brought her into it.
She became an active listener.
She was there, the whole fucking way.
‘You can say that again,’ she says.
I’ve got more material than I’ll ever need.
But what is lacking, is material on Rosie, I told her over the phone the other day.
‘So here is what I’m going to do,’ I told her, ‘I’m going to record our conversations.’
Rosie was cool with that.
‘You are going to be a super star,’ I added.
Rosie loved that.
She already is my superstar but there is no reason repeating it.
She has somewhat of a following among the international authors.
‘They all adore you,’ I told her.
Rosie already knows that.
She’s as charming as fuck and a force to be reckoned with.
She has her own safety net.
She needs it.
She’s living in District 9, a very dangerous area designated for African migration.
‘Shhh,’ she says, ‘don’t scare off the young couples looking at settling down in the area.’
'I don’t need to', I said, ‘as soon as they see the parks full of darkies playing soccer, or the house next door they are planning to buy full of Africans having a BBQ in their living room ,they may just move onto to a different suburb.’
‘But District 8 and 7 are also full of them,’ said Rosie who moved into this area in the 80s.
‘No darkies then,’ she said, ‘only the occasional Asian like myself, other than that, a white working class neighbourhood.
I'm drafting a book and putting you in it, I said.
Repetition is the way to go when talking with someone who has dementia and possibly Alzheimer's and most definitely Parkinsons.
‘Hay, that’s enough cheek from you and if you keep that up I’ll kick you,’says Rosie, who has given me permission to write about her.
She’s feisty for an 81-year old.
‘I bet I could beat most pensioners from the kitchen sink, to the bedroom, and back.’
She does it in record flat and usually with a hand full of knives cradled between her arms.
‘It’s so that if anyone breaks in, they can’t stab me.
But careful going to your room, I said.
‘What if you fall and stab yourself with all those sharp knives you are carrying?’
Rosie doesn’t seem too concerned.
She’s been doing it for years.
One moment there are spoons and knives in the draw, and the next day, they are gone.
‘How am I supposed to make a coffee if you keep on taking the spoons from the draw and putting them back in your room?
Rosie does not care.
This is her thing.
She enjoys it.
It keeps here busy.
It's something she is familiar with.
It keeps her sane.
It’s normal for her.
And if anyone does not like it, ‘they can fuck off.’
I'm usually the one doing the talking.
I joke to Rosie how half my brain is fried on Duromine.
We talk about many things over the phone.
We cover old territory, exploring new contours.
‘You repeat yourself,’ says Rosie.
Very astute.
That’s another reason I love her, she’s on the ball.
‘You mean late for the ball?’
Over a few nights, I called Rosie to flesh out her role in the book.
As usual, it was a one way conversation.
Rosie is old fashioned like that and will only speak when asked a question.
As you can see, I try to engage her, by repeating her name every five seconds just to make sure she’s on the line and not fallen asleep.
Rosie has figured out my number and calls me now.
She use to do it on her cordless phone until she chucked a tantrum and told her brother she didn’t want to use it.
Even I was surprised to hear that.
Rosie had multiple personalities, and this one must have been an attention seeking one.
She’s always panicking when her brother doesn’t contact her.
She even called me the other day, first time on her new phone that’s in her bedroom, to tell me to come around.
‘What for?’
I can’t tell you over the phone, she said.
Of course you can Rosie, now spit it out.
She also wanted to tell me that she had memorised my phone number.
I’ve written it down about twenty times.
‘Slight exaggeration.’
Alright, four times.
She dialed my mobile on her new phone.
She has migrated a long way from the cordless phone which she used to call me up to ten times a day.
'Another exaggeration.'
She caught me out, again.
You loved that phone, didn’t you Rosie, it gave you freedom to roam the house without having to run to your bed room to answer the phone. And most times by the time you arrived to answer the phone, it had stopped ringing.
I miss hanging out with Rosie.
I was raced out of the area.
'Now tell your story,' said Rosie.
With pleasure.
We care about our fat.
We wear it with comfort.
We just don’t want to admit that we are fat.
That would be disrespectful to fat, right?
Tubby.
Love handles and all.
It just creeped up on me.
One day, doing ok.
The next day, the gut wanted to take a dive below my cock line.
If you are a guy, you know what I’m taking about.
If you are a woman, Houston, we have a problem.
First step to overcoming a problem is facing up to it.
I am wearing 3 by large shirts.
That’s three sizes too big.
Three?
Yes, sometimes even wore four.
Given, a bit too big even for me.
So I’m no stranger to wearing tents.
I really thought the sizes were made for an Asian frame, not a large Caucasian,
since they were made in China.
That’s how I justified wearing those big shirts.
Besides, they didn’t cut into me and make me look ridiculously gay.
That’s how I look in large shirts.
Too tight, too clingy, obviously I’m overweight.
Denial, denial.
Have no fear, Mommy’s Little Helper is here.
Without it, I’d have Buckley’s hope of losing weight
With it, I can at least be a player.
It comes through with its promise.
She’s dependable like that.
Before you know it, people will look at your differently.
An atmosphere of confidence will shield you from deadly radiation and self-doubt.
You might even eye up a chick who is half your age and feel you have a chance.
That kind of confidence is a game changer.
It’s virility in a pill.
Maybe misguided confidence.
But no one cares.
They are too busy thinking about what to cook for their next meal.
On Mommy’s Little Helper, who thinks about food?
Nearly three month’s sucking from her teat, not only am I addicted to her milk,
I feel I have a handle on her.
Trial and error.
I’ll try and score some more of her soon.
But for now, best to lay low for a while.
Maybe the damage is already done.
Who gives a flying fuck?
Still lots of great work to do.
More pounds to shred.
More weights to lift.
I’m at a weight where whatever extra weight I lose, will come off effortlessly.
I know it sounds odd, but once you start feeling good about yourself, everything else falls into place.
‘Don’t look at the scale every day,’ said my doctor.
What he meant was, get fucked up and enjoy the tunes watching Japanese soft porn.
I love my doctor.
Bongo said once, ‘You don’t know who I am.’
Didn’t Faith say the same?
Threats threats and more.
Wish those niggers would return back to where they came from. ol
I admit I’m being moody.
Moving in this room was a back up plan.
It’s time.
I’ll tell Trang.
‘He keeps on slamming the door.’
‘But I already told him to do it quietly.’
I know, and you also told him ten times to move back to his old room but he didn’t.
He’s a sly and calculating nigger.
I don’t think he was a refugee.
The guy from Sri Lanka wasn’t either.
The last tenant even told me he had fake documents made up.
Australia truly is the promised land.
The ignorant pygmy fuck keeps on slamming his door.
Bongo is a cunt.
A dumb cunt.
‘You don’t know who I am.’
I know who you are.
You are a fake refugee and a lazy cunt.
‘I’m in Australia for work.’
Well why didn’t you feel in the application form I gave you for roadying?
Because he’s fucking lazy.
That’s my Duromine rant.
I haven’t finished with Faith.
I fantasized putting the knife to her.
I have a screwdriver handy in my room.
I’ll fucking stab Bongo if he tries to stab me.
He’s a refugee who was a militant who has killed many people.
That’s what they do.
It all begins with the slamming of the door.
Africans are backward people.
He is the stupidest fuck I’ve ever met.
And Faith is holding on to her meal ticket.
‘Keep your nose out of other people’s business.’
So then why the fuck did you say you were Congo when you are from Kenya?
‘I’ve learnt not to trust people, they’ll use the information against me.’
Exactly.
I got on the Department of Border Control website and tipped them off that an over stayer was staying here with me.
They haven’t acted upon the two tip offs.
Useless fucks.
It was either report her or eventually be driven crazy when anything could happen.
I bet Faith tortured kittens for fun back in Kenya.
Don’t let Bongo intimidate you.
‘You ask anyone who I am outside.’
I don’t need to.
I saw you at the Muslim grocery store handing over cash to that dodgy Afghan.
You are a drug dealer.
How else can you support Faith on the low income of welfare support?
In the early days, Bongo would have his friends around.
Five black Africans would congregate outside Trang’s house like it was the fucking ghetto.
Not a good look at all.
The area is not a good look.
And the three surrounding suburbs is an even worse look.
The Africans have congregated around these suburbs making it their paradise.
Safety in numbers, hay?
That’s how they work.
It was no accident the Faith turned up here.
She wouldn’t turn up, say in Bayswater.
Just not enough niggers there to hoodwink.
She hoodwinked Bongo.
I was there when it happened.
I was an accomplice.
I helped in keeping her hidden from Trang.
I should have just toll the landlady that Bongo had sneaked in someone.
But I didn’t.
I thought I was doing the right and humane thing.
First mistake, Africans aren’t very grateful.
They’ll take as much as they can and that doesn’t mean they owe you anything.
If anything, what it means, they have more right to fuck you over.
The bigger the fuck over, the better, in their primitive tribal eyes.
In the early days I got to know Bongo.
He was agreeable, polite and happy.
Faith, if that’s her real name, dragged him down to the gutters.
He was now banished from the Garden of Eden and he didn’t even get to fuck her.
Bongo has intimidated me.
He was brilliant about it.
It couldn’t have worked any better.
First, he got respect, yes I fear him, secondly, it looked great in front of Faith.
He’s quite good at knocking on doors, loudly.
So is Faith.
These primitives are better without doors.
Faith loves knocking loud on my door.
Now Bongo is making a habit of it.
They want me out.
Oldest trick in the book, knocking loud on door until the person staying inside that room either goes crazy and insane, or moves out.
I moved out.
Another secret weapon of the Africans was singing.
Faith could do it all day and night.
I don’t wear ear plugs anymore.
I don’t need to wear them.
I don’t wear noise filtering headsets.
I don’t need to wear noise filtering headsets.
Faith and Bongo should get married.
And return back to Africa.
Have kids.
Embrace their culture.
Be among their own.
And stop fucking terrorising white people.
In due time they’ll take over Australia and race out the white man.
Like they did in South Africa.
It’s their way.
They have the nastiness for it too.
I crave for a peace and quiet place.
The Nepalese was referred to me by another Indian, Kewal.
For a year I had to listen to this cunt sing and talk and fuck around.
He was a lazy ass too.
‘He’s your best friend.’
Now what the fuck does Congo Bongo mean by that.
He won’t ever tell me.
He’s incapable.
It’s just creepy the way he says that.
Could I just clap both hands around his ears, or spit on him or kick him in the balls, or put a bullet between his eyes.
‘He’s your best friend.’
You fucking retartd Bongo .
It’s confirmed.
He’s a guy who got raced out of his last place for not doing the cleaning.
He’s just like you, but a brown lazy nigger.
He’s just like Faith, who is a black dirty nigger.
How the fuck did you get into Australia, begs the question.
Fuck Australia has low standards.
They got into Australia by lying.
The dirty bitch cooks at 10.15 pm.
Is this some kind of I’m an ‘Adult African’ kind of thing.
She did that when I started work for Lawrence Tan.
I was in this room.
She banged and kept me awake.
Then the nigger, Congo Bongo started dragging a big steal case from his room and into the kitchen.
Then I moved back to my old room.
I did tell Faith to be quiet after 10 pm.
No, she didn’t listen and kept on banging.
I hate her.
I always will hate her.
Wish the nigger gets deported back to Kenya.
I thought niggers were dumb and agreeable.
No, they are dirty filthy arrogant and nigger fuckers.
Well she had fucked over Bongo .
And for that I am grateful.
She’s not all bad.
‘I’m paying rent,’ she told me.
Bongo said she wasn’t.
Bongo said she’d pay him back.
She even wrote it on a piece of paper.
That was good enough for the dumb ass.
Faith is a pathological liar.
Don’t trust a nigger, said my neighbor.
‘They are cunning.’
Faith is a dirty ugly slut.
You know she’ll never buy anything for the house, like bleach ect.
She’s a dirty little mole.
‘You don’t know who I am.’
Yes I do, a dirty nigger with a black face you keep on trying to erase with potato starch.
I can hear the dog a few rooms down.
I fucking hate him too.
He has three bikes near the gate.
I bump into them all the time.
I’ll tell Trang, then Trang will tell him to move them, which he will, then the next day they will be back in the way, near the gate.
What a fucking dirty dog.
I call Rosie often from District 1, designated by the State as Nigger Free Zone.
Hadn't things changed from the 80s when the local aborigines were banned from entering the city of Perth?
Now the Noongah can live it up big in District 2, where the clubs, whore house and drug dealers can be found.
'So what's the update,' she asks.
I remember my 20s working as a waiter at this sort of high-class restaurant in the big city I was living in.
I was at my prime.
The gays called me ‘The Body.’
Rosie’s eyebrows arch.
Isn’t’ that what they called Elle Mc pherson, the famous 90’s Australian swim wear model, asked Rosie.
Well there you go.
I was called the body.
And boy didn’t I like to fucking flaunt it?
These days I try and hide it, camouflage or just deny I’m even fat.
‘Get back to the story,’ said Rosie.
Sorry, a slight detour.
Blame it on the Duromine.
Been fighting psychosis the last few weeks.
Nearly took me down.
‘What do you mean, nearly took you down?’ asked Rosie, who always thought I was crazy from the first day I met her.
‘And if you weren’t crazy, I would never have invited you into my home.’
How’s that for an endorsement?
The manager of this five-star restaurant was in his late forties.
He had love handles.
You could see them spreading out under his starched white shirt.
He had a balding head.
And he was a creep.
A faggot who wanted to fuck my ass.
‘Sydney is famous for that,’ said Rosie.
It was I said, and I had a few gay fans to who wanted to fuck The Body.
‘I bet you tried to sell your ass too?’
Rosie, decorum please.
He used to make wise cracks.
‘I bet you’re got a tight ass under those baggy black pants.’
Then he’d pat my ass.
He was the manager and could get away with shit like that.
It was before PC crept into the work place.
I played it up to keep my job and the creep got his money’s worth by the occasional grope.
It’s how things worked in hospitality back then.
Now I had become that man, the lurch, I was the sleaze bag with the love handles and gut that wanted to play touch the fucking floor.Rosie chuckled on the end of the line.
‘You still got me,’ she says.
Huh, and isn’t everyone jealous I said.
‘Betsy really wants you bad,’ she says.
She’s talking about her Burmese friend who has piles.
Betsy visits Rosie most days.
They eat fish and chips from Ali’s, a fish and chip shop across the road.
Rosie use to eat Red Rooster until they closed it down over two decades ago.
Each day goes like this\:
‘Betsy is so cheap; she never pays her half.’
Other days it goes like this:
‘She paid her half. She’s a good girl.’
A 72 year old girl, she looks good for her age.
Some days Rosie doesn’t remember what she ate, if it was fish and chips for bread and eggs.
It’s her right to be forgetful and to enjoy the now.
Sometimes I see she has left the element on the stove.
I turn it off.
‘Don’t tell my brother,’ she says, ‘he’ll send me to a nursing home.’
I haven’t told him yet.
But just imagine if her house burnt down.
Could I live with it?
No I couldn’t, if I didn’t tell her brother that sometimes she leaves the element on.
What if she puts her hand on it and burns herself?
So far it hasn’t happened yet. Heaven forbid.
