Current Issue + contents + contributors + thanks News Next Issue Submit Links About Contact Archive         A rounding out of the self for those with an eye to the short term. Hedonists are hopeless. But, hope is for those who believe only in future pleasure. So, hedonists are realists, the philosophers of the age. Practical philosophers waging chemical warfare against the nauseating existential enemy. If you can pin your emptiness on a binge that emptied your mind like an aeroplane toilet, you have a functioning dialectical belief system. While I look the other way, Julian lights a joint. In the emptiness of the night air I can almost hear him buzz as he holds the smoky air in his lungs. I watch the stars and search for patterns in the sky. No constellations yet tonight. Talk cheapens things and is inefficient, so we sit in silence. The air is cool. Below us, stacked in eleven cloying storeys, live more than seventy people. Most are in bars and cars elsewhere, while appliances’ flashing lights send Morse code signals across the waxed-floorboard emptiness of their packet-furniture homes. Alarm systems flash. We live here, but on the roof we are apart. I wear a scarf my ex-girlfriend knitted. Julian is in a dressing gown over his jeans and t shirt. We feel warm—protected against the air, cheered by the company, and slowly feeling less institutionalised by the dehumanising efforts of the chemicals in the blood. As we smoke we become less uptight, feel less mundane. We are given the key to the door of the human asylum and we begin meandering toward the perimeter walls. Rarely do we leave, although there have been times when we have shot out of our cell windows, shimmied down drain pipes, bolted across the asylum lawns, and vaulted the eleven-foot walls to run like deer in the forests. LSD mostly. But not on the roof. Tonight perhaps we will get up on the walls and patrol them, looking out at the ‘here be monsters’ areas beyond the knowledge of those stacked up in the storeys below. I lean back on the big exhaust chimney and am warm with the fossil fuels paid for by others. The first joint is gone; Julian signals that another will begin by reaching into his pocket and taking a little, white, cigar-shaped UFO from a pack otherwise full of expensive French cigarettes. He affects a nonchalant face and cracks his zippo. Against the backdrop of stars, treetops and city lights it is cinematic. Of the people I have smoked with, my housemate Julian is the coolest, and the most silent. He passes to me and I pull hard with my diaphragm. As I exhale I enjoy the sight of the smoke particles dissipating in the cold and flying off to heaven. I feel a bit glassy, a bit contemplative. I look at the randomness of the stars and wait for the constellations to rise. I want to be able to see things I recognise, put a bit of order into the chaos. I drag once more and pass the joint back. The still air transmits the bedlam of cars up to our haven. I feel absorbed into the rooftop, becoming part of the skyline, like a chimney or antenna. I wonder what would happen if I never went back down, and realise I have been let out of my cell, and am freely wandering the grounds of the human asylum. Julian reaches his left hand out and I take the thing from between his first and second fingers. I drag and flick it. The sparks cascade like New Years’ fireworks and the burning roach-end lies like a fallen star on the textured surface of our apartment rooftop. I give it the eye until it is extinguished. Then my regard returns to the heavens. Because the joint is finished, Julian speaks. ‘Good stuff, huh?’ I tuck my hands up into my armpits. My feet lie stretched out in front of me, pointing towards the sea, pointing south, toward where my favourite constellations lie. ‘See any stars?’ ‘Sure can.’ This is another way of saying that he too is feeling the drug’s effects. Out of his cell and down among the neatly-pruned roses and clean flowerbeds of the asylum garden. He is sitting with his knees up and his hands down in his dressing gown pockets, eyes on the horizon. I look up. Constellations may be rising, and there is not a cloud in this cool, still sky. I look over; he has a little hinged box out, and he is getting some stuff out of it. It must have been in his pocket. ‘You wanna shoot something?’ ‘Sure.’ I feel clear-headed, and excited. ‘What is it?’ ‘New stuff, from Smith.’ His dealer, Smith, makes living with Julian a pleasure. ‘Nothing bad, man. No smack. Just something to help us run away.’ Tonight we will knock down the asylum with a chemical wrecking ball. We will romp in the dust of its foundations. We will make off with every last brick and make offensive postmodern architecture on the far side of the river. We will slide down the gleeful banisters of eternal staircases and run naked through the corridors of nightmare. From our neo-Faustian apartment balconies we shall have a hurling of insults at the memory of the asylum. Until it fades. I look to the stars and the Southern Cross is visible. I am cheered by its familiar upside-down configuration and salute the infinity. ‘To liberty,’ I say. ‘To liberty,’ comes the echo. * Pillow is in my eye. In my mouth, in my nose. Light shows, staring at me. Must close curtain. Close my eyes—something is askew. I feel falling. Falling and spinning. I’m hot. Jump out of bed, wobbly like a hoop as the momentum goes. Twisted, the sheet has followed me up. It clings and hangs and I fight it; slain, it falls. Tramp it as I go to the curtain. Pulling, pulling on the string I feel like a kaleidoscope again. Time to slump. I dream black zeroes. Now it’s darker. Nose is bleeding. Push my hand on it. Blood everywhere blood! Blood! Push and squeeze, hold your breath, don’t drown. Pinch tight—tighter! Tip your head: tongue lolls in throat. Blood…Coughing, stumble, pinch, head back—loll, loll, look. Ensuite mirror shows white, just white. Puffing, panting, panic was blood. Panic. Just panic. Time to drink. Drink. Hail hate hate hang. Down rain rain run. Run. Hang. I dream of crowded spaces. Bedlam. Rapid ragged rainbow rapid rain rain pall . Cold. I ache. Tiles press against my hip. It is dark. My head aches. Joints cracking, I stand. I hold onto the towel rail and flick the switch. Fluoro blinks into existence. Plink plink … plink. My head shows in the mirror. A red right angle on my cheek shows where my face had been on the bath mat. Red in my eyes shows the veins that coursed with so much of everything. Red on my lips shows a crack in my body. A drop of dried blood. I drink from the tap. Pee. Go to my room. Behind the curtains it is night. Red numbers say 7:35. I lie down. No, need food. Time to go to the shop. Jacket, shoes, key, wallet. Julian’s door is closed. Lift ride. Down to the ground. I see reflections all around. I breathe fast. Lift is smaller, smaller. Like doors closing. Reach, reaching, no! Hands press hard on mirror. No! Numbers won’t change, little red numbers stopped like fairness. My nose tingles, my eyes smart. I collapse in tears, head in elbows, arms and jacket tight. On the third floor the doors open. The tears are streaming. I bow my face, pull at my jacket. A man and woman look. They know; tell them, they don’t hear. Tell them quieter. I know. I know, I know but they hear each word. Hear it before I say it out the door on the street. Take a deep breath, look up. Stars. Only a few stars. No constellations, just a nonsensical mess. Deep breath. Ragged breath. No more, sob, ok. Smooth, smooth breathing. Ok ok ok ok. No more panic. No more, ok?   Do you have a comment about this piece? email your thoughts to Harbinger.