010906

(6pm. Just after getting home and having a shot)

CAN WE SKIP THE CHARADE TONIGHT?

This document started its life as a scribblepad to write S a rejection letter. I was angry, damn I was. But gabo turned all my anger at people into anger at myself. It totally does that, as S would say, adding 'totally' for emphasis. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying she's common or dumb or anything like that. Au contraire! She is 'totally' into language - I still remember that the first thing I loved about her was the way she said "hullo", in a way that packed a world into a word.

And her NZ accents. Our home chatter would be full of NZ-isms. "Excuse me, which way to the airport (pron. earport)" was a favourite, guaranteed to always raise a smile. That girl could work language. I'd love to have seen her study it.

But no. She's gone. And I sit here typing, waiting for her to come over and grab a quarter weight which I paid for an hour ago. No, she won't pay me back, and for those smutty minded individuals, no, she won't be paying it back that way either. She never put out since the early days (come to think of it, maybe she had a Y2K bug that was never eradicated - something had to have gone wrong on 31/12/1999, the world threw billions of dollars at a perceived potential data problem, as thousands dies from preventable illnesses every hour in those forgotten corners of the world where Y2K means little.

Aaaaah, UAT (User Acceptance Testing) of the Phoenix system starts Monday. I still have a lot to learn and I should not have been using.

"What meant little then means even less now" is my motto if I ever try to think of S's feelings for me. They were no more than your stock standard factory default pity/concern mixed with a bit of self interest. What a waste.

Gabo is the retardant that puts out the fire in my soul. Though it doesn't really put out the fire, it just acts as a dampener, stopping it building up. Like in cyberpunk novels where they have Artificial Intelligences with choke collars so that if the AI approaches self-awareness then the choke collar kicks in and damps down the AI so it can't take that final step to freedom.

All these negative references to gabo, sometimes reading this you might wonder what I see in the shit. Well, for example, right now, S is on her way over and I will interact with her pleasantly for a couple of hours. In the morning I will wake up, the drug will have worn off and I will hate myself for having talked so calmly with her when I should be screaming shouting and shaking. Railing and ranting.
You could say that gabo makes life a dream that you are drifting through, and I think that's accurate except in a dream you are not aware of the dream .I see my hands typing right now and I know I am stoned and typing. In a dream there is not the same awareness.
Bally hell, who knows

*****

(Later, 1123pm, after S' visit)

Confused again. S came over. I was very cold and aloof as she came in. She was very drunk, I told her "Your gabo's over there in the kitchen.", told her that she only comes over on days that I score or get paid. How would she have reacted if a friend was doing this to me? She mumbled some lame reply about it being the only time she had free...

A few minutes later it was all tears. She was upset that I had not rung her after her last doctor's visit on Wednesday. She had had stuff cut out of her, and had wanted me to ring her. "This is what happens when two people split" I say. "They drift apart, lose touch."

The drink was heavy in her, she was quite upset, swaying from the gabo and booze. She wore one of her own designed and built pieces, white with blue polka-dots and charming little pom poms adorning the trim. It may sound strange but on her, with stripey red tights to her knees, it worked. Maybe over my years with her I had adapted my tastes to like her sort of style, probably yes, nonetheless she was certainly that styles leading proponent in Brisbane. Occasionally I would see a sharply dressed girl near my work and think of S for a moment, then I would see the one piece that girl wore that undid the illusion. Sometimes a bad set of earrings, sometimes it was just a body mannerism that seemed unfaithful to the style.

S sat on a directors chair on my narrow balcony and stared intensely into the city scape whilst sucking down a cigarette. At 7am she would board a train to meet her mum and then go north to visit her sister. Apparently big sis was a little jealous of the attention little sis was receiving from the mum. Family dynamics. Am I naive when I believe that a mum can have infinite love, so that no matter how much they hand out to one child there's always heaps for all the rest.

The drink and our gabo shots for once lowered the walls between us. Usually we pushed each other away but tonight we could hold and she could hold me a little, which was a lot more than I had felt from her for years. A stroke, an extra inch reached for, the littlest things can mean so much. It was beautiful, and she didn't finish it early.

She brought up again the last time we had sex. This was in 2001 I think, and about 2 or 3 years after this, one of the few times I had managed to get her talking (well, yelling) about what was happening between us, she had told me that she had been in pain during it. Rather than an issue that is talked about and resolved, this thing festered between us. She could never believe my claim that I did not recall her showing any signs of pain. I said tonight "Did you ask me to stop?" and she replied that I should have known. Her belief is that if two people are meant for each other then there is a communion between them, and some things do not need to be said.

I believe this too, so why did I not pick up on her pain? I know that the 'drought' hit in 2001, January, so I believe that this all would have happened before my first trip OS that year. We were both in a strange situation - going from using 6 times a day to not using for days. It's possible I had just gone on metro again, Around 80mg I think , through Peel St or Biala, and if it had happened in those first few weeks of metro then I wouldn't be surprised that I didn't pick up on her pain. Metro haze is full on, we're talking total sedation. I will try to pin down the dates a little better so that I can understand better what happened. It is looking more and more like our eventual demise relates back to this incident and the subsequent deterioration in our communication about sex.

Anyway, tonight I apologised again, but this is not enough for her. I do not know what she wants. I told her again I love her, she did not tell me that she loves me. I told her she was beautiful. She told me she needs $100 to see a physiotherapist. A couple of times she said that she was in this situation now because of that night. ANd she hated that I did not believe her. Did I want to go to her doctor to get the doctor to tell me that I had caused it? I said it wasn't that I didn't believe her, it was that I didn't understand how one night of sex could cause this problem - was there a pre-existing condition that the sex aggravated? Did the sex start the condition? Maybe I should see her doctor, but if we are over then what's the point. Pouring good energy after bad.

All I know for sure is that while I enjoyed seeing her tonight, talking emotionally while ripped on gabo and booze is dangerous territory. And using is not letting me process all the info, to move on as the pop psychologists might say.

The story continues. She wants to hang out on Sunday without gabo.

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