Psychotic

When I woke up my first thought — not counting the customary mental cursing at having to work yet another day — was to wonder why the walls were bleeding. At that early hour of the morning, my brain still fuzzy from the shock of my dream, it was a mere absent-minded ponderance — a thought with which to fill a few minutes before getting out of bed: “Why are my walls bleeding?”

After a few moments with this thought I found myself struck numb with panic — I didn’t know whether to sit bolt upright with a look of uncomprehending astonishment and demand an explanation, or to settle back with the calm reassurance that this was just carry-over from my dream… indeed, perhaps I was still asleep.

But I soon confirmed to myself that this was, indeed, a waking perception… but even by this time the blood was beginning to fade and my mind beginning to doubt I’d seen anything at all. Mm… yes — carry-over from my dreams.

… Or maybe, I thought, it was the neighbours up to their practical jokes again. They had, after all, not so long ago filled my small backyard with horrifically ugly toads. Masses of them, which disappeared equally mysteriously around lunch time. But how would they have managed a trick such as bleeding walls? I had been carefully keeping all my doors and windows locked, and the blinds down. Maybe they got in my house long ago and set it all up then. I made a mental note to search the house for bugs or any transmitters as soon as I got the chance.

At the office, my boss asked why my quality of work had declined so dramatically over the past six months. “Is there something in your life at the moment?” he asked. How could I tell him my neighbours had found a way to control my mind and were filling my head with critical voices which distracted me from my work? How could he even expect me to concentrate when he knew full well that the pile of hacked-off limbs behind his desk was fully visible to me?

I spent the rest of the day keeping an eye out for one-armed or one-legged employees. I saw none. What happened to them? Did nobody notice they were gone? “He’s with us, you incompetent idiot!” said the voices.

You are going to have an accident! Hahahahaha we’ll see him fall! We’ll make him fall! Fallfallfallfallfall SPLAT! Can you hear it? Can you hear how you will sound? SPLATSPLATSPLAT! Look out the window! Hahahahahahhahahaha! SPLAT! Fall! We think you want it! Mm… maybe we should keep him a while. Shall we keep him? We can make him do things. He does things for us. Yes, he does do things for us. We can make him… WORK? Why do you WORK? Stop working! Do something for us! Hahahahaha! Go tell your boss you know about the limbs. Haha! The limbs! The limbs! Yes! The limbs! Why didn’t we do it before? We want more limbs! We want his limbs!

I didn’t want to do what they said. But fighting them was so hard. They made me get up and take the stanley knife from my desk drawer. Stanley knife? They must have been crazy to think I could hack off a limb with that! I had to fight them. They forced me over to my office door, but their control was too primitive to manage the handle easily. While they fumbled getting me to open it, I was able to take enough control to beat my head against the door. Thump! Thump! Thump! It made them weaker. Eventually the stanley knife fell from my fingers, but I kept banging. I don’t remember stopping.

A Reformation

READER WARNING

The following story contains violent scenes that you may find disturbing.

Author introduction

This is a piece I wrote in 1999 as the main assessment for a creative writing course at Melbourne University. It was inspired by current news at the time and my own reflections on media reporting conventions, my studies in Psychology and Philosophy and my observations on people’s strategies for coming to terms with terrible events. This story examines a character who does atrocious things. I have deliberately written this character as an enigma, with no apparent reason for the decisions he has made in life. For those who know me who might read this and recognise aspects of the story, it is to create that enigma that I have deliberately used some events or scenarios from my own, stable and functional, early life in the development of the character Marcus.

With the recent death of Carl Williams in custody, this story seemed to me to be fitting to publish now.

When I read this story now, I can hardly believe I could have written about such things. I both hate it and love it. You’ve been warned. Twice.

The Supermarket I

George meets him in aisle seven — dairy goods and frozens. He is reaching for the low fat yogurt his wife likes him to get and this guy says, “cold, innit?” and just grins at him strange-like. Until now, George hadn’t thought about the temperature. He just wanted to grab the stuff he needed and go. He hates Shopping Day. But now this bloke has drawn his attention to it, he feels one of those shivers run through him. Like the sort when if someone sees you, they go, “someone walked over your grave?” Only, this guy doesn’t say that, he just grins and waits. “Yeah,” says George.

“Story I hear,” says this guy, “is they make it cold so’s you’ll be feeling more hungry and buy more.” And he grins again, then just wanders off.

George stands still for a moment, then shakes his head and drops the yogurt in his basket and moves on. He just wants to get out of here.

A while later, in the cereals and health foods section, George hears shouting from the opposite end of the supermarket — down where the fruit and veg and fancy-bum deli are. Sounds like kids are setting off fireworks. Security guards are suddenly coming from nowhere, headed for a central point down there. George imagines a huge magnet obscured by the drinks shelf. Security guards are all sticking to it and waving their arms and legs around hopelessly and bellowing like tipped cows.

George grabs a box of “Special K” and a couple of packets of high-fibre muesli.

George moves to the sauces section. The fireworks are still going off. Someone has started screaming. Stupid kids. George grabs a bottle of soy sauce and some of that fancy tobasco stuff his wife insists on getting. He just wants to get out of here.

George checks his list. Real coffee beans, broccoli, carrots and mushrooms — all in the same section of the supermarket — the one now made hazardous by frolicking youth. As George looks up from his list, he notices the staff at the checkouts are leaving in an undignified hurry. He exchanges a puzzled glance with an elderly gentleman further down the aisle, who is grasping a jar of mustard like it is his saviour.

George heads for the end of the supermarket, still hearing the popping of fireworks. Why, he wonders, haven’t the security guards stopped them yet?

He begins to formulate an answer to this question when he steps on a hand. It is a security guard’s hand. Looking for a corresponding face to apologise to, he discovers it amidst a pool of blood and other people’s bodies. There are bodies everywhere, some of them adults, some children, littered around a central point. That guy with the grin. The guy with the grin with the gun. Pointed at George.

George freezes. At the back of his mind, he wonders if he should be doing something — leaping, throwing things, running, or just having his life flash before his eyes. But all he can do is stand and watch the guy with the grin and the gun walk slowly closer and — oh, yes — drop his basket of groceries to the floor and slowly, half-heartedly, raise his hands in homage to an over-saturation with Hollywood blockbusters.

Grinning gun guy keeps moving forward with a look of childlike fascination at this scenario he has created. He moves right up until he is standing close enough to George to reach out and touch his wrinkled face. George barely feels the warm stream coursing down his leg. He is focusing all his concentration on being afraid.

The guy with the grin and the gun stares into George’s eyes and puts the gun to his temple. George trembles.

Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, there is a jolt and the grin is gone and the gun is gone and the guy is kneeling on the floor with his arms over his head and rocking on his feet and weeping, weeping.

George doesn’t know what to do. So he kneels down and takes the sobbing guy’s hand and he puts his arm around him and he weeps with him.

In the distance, the sound of sirens.

Lunchtime

Lunchtime. Every space surrounding the schoolrooms that hasn’t been placed under a curse by those magical words, “Out Of Bounds”, erupts into a frenzy of shouting children. Globally, they spread out to fill an enormous area, but locally they stick together in smaller lumps. These lumps move and run and shout. Sometimes the lumps break into smaller lumps, and sometimes two lumps join to form one bigger lump. Lumps skip rope and lumps kick footballs. Lumps tighten their bonds and giggle into walls. Lumps throw stones at the gigglers. Everywhere, lumps do these things — no free-floating particles.

Only one free-floating particle — Marcus. The lump-watcher.

Lumps call him Nigel, even though it isn’t his name. He puts it down to their age.

Lumps push him into the gigglers, shattering them into particles like drops of water.
They quickly regather.

Marcus sits in the dust blinking.
An enormous lump — a mass — has formed by the monkey bars. Marcus wanders over.

A particle fell on its head. The sand below the bars is stained red around it and its neck is twisted in a new way.
Marcus thinks it looks interesting.

Marcus remembers his sandwich and unwraps it to eat. He looks at the fallen particle while he chews. Crumbs fall to the ground and become part of the red stain.

The sound of crying comes from the mass and it exudes fear and confusion. Marcus notices how the particle’s right arm is twisted behind its head. He wonders if his own arm could do that. He tries.
It can’t be done.

A teacher. The mass separates, and flushes with a tide of relief. The teacher bends over the fallen. The particle’s eyes open and stare straight at Marcus. He’s never seen eyes like that. It is wonderful — like they are seeing a dancing, talking fish just behind Marcus’ shoulder.
Marcus grins back at the eyes, then finishes his sandwich.

A Theory of Human Nature

I don’t have a first memory. I feel I have in some way let myself down by this. It is like I should have tried harder to keep my memories ordered and catalogued, and made sure to update them once in a while to keep them clear and fresh. But I didn’t. So when it comes to early memories, there is no discernible first. Some things I remember one day, and not the next. I don’t know if the memory of my mother showing me my broken bottle comes before or after the memory of watching my older brother and his friend running around in Superman capes.

I do remember watching the news once, and there was this thing about some woman who’d capsized her yacht in rough waters and had to be rescued at some ridiculous cost like six million dollars or something. All this crap about being politically correct, not discriminating between class and race and all that. All that moaning and bitching about the poor sods in third world countries starving to death. And then what? They go spend six million dollars to save one miserable, ungrateful idiot where the same amount could have saved hundreds more.

And, after all that, she undoubtedly just got back in her yacht and sailed off again.

Thirteen people were killed yesterday when a car bomb exploded outside a hotel in Port Moresby.

New Colgate Whitening. Now available in three great flavours!

Every twenty seconds, a child dies of starvation.

Carla is forced to make a decision that could change her life forever.
Who will go with Natasha to the graduation ball?
Don’t miss the gripping drama, six-thirty tonight on ten.

Now there is a bank that can look after all your needs.
Which bank?

Melbourne’s drug problem continues to worsen, with heroin overdoses becoming an increasing problem in our city streets.

Dazzling colour! And at a price anyone can afford.

Now with a handy measuring dispenser. So you’ll never use more than you need.

It amazes me how many of them know exactly what is wrong with the world while it continues to stay wrong. I read the newspaper and they say, “in the days before television was in every home, people could leave their doors unlocked and take late night walks without fearing for their lives.”

In the 1960s, smallpox was a major world problem, with fifteen million deaths every year worldwide. In 1969, the first man landed on the moon. Missions to the moon continued until the end of 1972. Within three years of the last moon landing, smallpox was declared entirely eradicated from India. Four years after that, it was declared gone from the earth completely.

Thank the Lord for Neil Armstrong.

But, despite their convictions, still they watch television. Maybe just to remind themselves how unsafe their streets really are.

I figure this is proof they don’t make any sense. It all goes to further support my general theory of human nature.

Today when I was taking my morning walk, I cut through the children’s playground. I like to sit on the little park bench and watch the interaction between the children and their parents. I enjoy trying to guess which parents belong to which kids. It is rarely difficult.

On my way to the park bench, a girl shouted, “Daddy! Daddy, look!” while running from the play equipment toward me, holding some object in one hand. She ran right up to me and grabbed my trouser leg, looking up with eyes all full of discovery. But she saw I wasn’t her father and all the discovery was gone and she turned and ran to find her real father.

Early on in my life, my father had made a point of being really close to his children. He always had plenty of time for them, and he would try to include them in his activities whenever he could. If there were things he needed to do when they asked him to play with them, he wouldn’t ever say, “No kids, Daddy is busy right now… maybe later, though?” No, he would turn what he had to do into a game that they could all be part of. If he had to mow the lawn, the back yard became the surface of the moon and the mower a machine for laying the foundation of a moon base. His children were a scout party, checking ahead of him for the alien enemy — sticks and rocks — which would thwart his efforts by jamming his foundation machine. They were to prevent such a disaster by locating the foe and launching them into the furthest reaches of space — in this case a drainage ditch that ran along the fence line.

But when I was only seven, I made it impossible for him to maintain a closeness with me. It was a school afternoon, when my brother and sister were both away on a school camp held for the older grades. So it was just my father and myself. We were in the tool shed. My father had to replace the mower blades, as they had encountered one too many of the aliens that had been too clever for all of us. My job was to find and destroy the hiding places of the alien spies that would discover the deepest secrets of the foundation machine if they saw my father at work. This basically meant going through the shed and clearing out all the cobwebs. However, since my father had decided he liked spiders and didn’t believe in hurting them, I was to have mercy on the spies themselves. I thought this was totally illogical, considering the number of arachnid and insect deaths he must have caused every time he mowed the lawn.
So I pulled off their legs when he wasn’t looking.

I got bored with the game too quickly, and soon began occupying myself by looking at all the different tools in the shed and wondering what interesting things I could use them for. That’s when I spotted my father’s precious machete. He’d always told us how it was very sharp and very dangerous, which made it a highly desirable thing to play with. I suddenly had an insatiable desire to see what he would do if I started playing with it. So I unsheathed the machete and started using it to noisily hack away at the cobwebs.

My father was concentrating pretty hard on the mower, though, and didn’t even notice. I was still hacking away, waiting for him to notice, wanting to see how he would react, when I had another idea.

I crept up behind him with the machete and slowly brought it level with his arm. Then I shouted, “Daddy! Look!” and cut a deep gouge in his arm as he spun around. For a moment he couldn’t grasp what had just happened. His other hand automatically leapt to his arm to stem the flow of blood. And he just stared at me. Then the signals of what had happened to his arm actually reached his brain. “Marcus! What did you do that for?!” he roared at me.
I just dropped the machete and grinned at him.

From that day on, my father and I grew very much apart.

I met this guy in the Bourke street mall once who claimed he was Jesus. He was handing out fliers announcing the end of the age, and telling anyone who was willing to listen that he was Jesus, and this was his second coming. “The Son of God walks this earth for the second time,” he told me, “and you are speaking to Him now.” Then he asked me if I wanted to see The House of God.

I thought, “this has to be interesting”, and agreed to go with him.

I helped him hand out the rest of his fliers, although I left the job of claiming to be Jesus to him. After he’d given out all he had, he took me to where his battered yellow Celica was parked, and we drove for over an hour to reach his house.

The House of God was a run-down wooden hut at that point just beyond the northernmost Melbourne suburbs where suddenly everything is farms. Inside there was an ancient table with a warped top, and two milk crates for seats. There was no bed.

Jesus showed me around with a single sweep of his arm. Then he sat down and started to tell me all sorts of things about his father’s plan for all humanity. It mostly seemed to involve making cheese from goat’s milk. He showed me one of his goats, which tried to eat my jacket.

I asked him how he expected he would die this time around, and he told me he would be publicly executed like last time.

So I shot him in the face.

It turned out he’d been a millionaire. He’d had all this money from who-knows-where, and spent his life living in that dump. In his will, he left everything he had to some weirdo charity. It was all in the papers.

Of course, next thing you know some guy appears out of nowhere and claims to be his illegitimate son, and contests the will in court. A couple of months later he was serving a life sentence for the cold-blooded murder of the Son of God.

The Supermarket II

When I woke up this morning, I had nothing to do. I just lay in bed wondering what interesting thing I could do to fill in my day. I turned on the television to see if it could help me.
The ad with the singing potatoes came on.

I decided it was time to do some grocery shopping.

I enter the supermarket by going the wrong way through a checkout aisle. This unnerves the staff at the registers somewhat, which is good. I take one of the baskets stacked by checkout aisle six. It is green with black handles, which I like. I put the roll of lifesavers and the Cosmopolitan magazine I picked up on the way through the checkout in the basket and head for the hardware and kitchen utensils area, right at the end of the supermarket. There is a security guard gazing into space in the corner by the spatulas, can openers and roasting pans. It is a good place for him. He can stay there.

There is a young lady in the middle of the aisle looking for the best valued dishwashing brush. I move to stand very close to her, and reach across in front of her to take a packet of dishwashing gloves and put it in my basket. She gives me a Look, and moves to look at items she doesn’t really want to buy in the corner opposite the security guard. It isn’t exactly where I think she should be, but it will do.

I circuit round the back of the supermarket to aisle seven. There’s a guy there getting stuff from the dairy section. He is a person I need to talk to. I walk over to him, and tell him it is cold. This seems new to him, and he considers it before giving an acknowledging shiver. I explain why it must be so, and move on.

This is how it should work.

I move to the fruit and vegetables section, at the opposite end to hardware. I take an orange and two lemons and smile at a child becoming increasingly bored in her mother’s trolley. Then I place my basket on top of some bags of potatoes, take out my gun and shoot a man at the deli in the back. The glass of the deli cabinet is spattered with his blood as it shatters and he falls to the ground. The mother of the child in the trolley spins to stare at me, then slowly covers her child’s head protectively with her hands.

Should I shoot the mother or the child first?

I decide to shoot the child. The bullet tears first through the mother’s protective hands, then hits the child. A look of grief, horror and disbelief wrenches the mother’s face into a disfigured grimace. I watch her for a while, then shoot her, too. Nobody has screamed. Everyone who has seen what’s going on is frozen with fear. That is good.

And suddenly it has started. Shouting. People are either running at me, presumably in an attempt to be heroic, or running away from me. I shoot them all. Screaming. For a while it seems like I will never kill the last of them — they just keep coming from around shelves and displays. But eventually there is no more movement. I stop to survey my creation. I find it Very Good.

But now the guy from aisle seven appears from behind the drinks shelf. He hasn’t seen me yet. He is looking at the bodies littering the floor and his face is calm. As though he is looking for something he dropped.
It hasn’t registered for him yet.

But then he sees me, and I see the realisation in his face. Excellent. I keep the gun pointed at him, and walk closer. The others I had to kill too quickly. This time I want to watch the full process of fear in action. He slowly raises his hands in a way that makes me want to laugh. But this must be a serious moment, so I refrain and just grin a bit more. I walk right up to him and stare into his face. The look of fear is so precious. I reach out and touch his cheek. It is trembling ever so slightly. I put the gun to his temple, and stare into his eyes. I want to see what happens there.

But what I see in those eyes is not what I expect. I am hit with sudden doubt. I look away briefly, and think, “I’ll get over it.” But I don’t. When I look back again, what I see in those eyes destroys in a moment all that I had planned. In an instant, what I see in those eyes sends my intentions, my reasons, my actions and my conclusions into a confused, meaningless jumble.

He is looking back at me. He is me.

I can’t shoot me. He is me. I can’t shoot him.

I feel my grin disintegrate as I am overpowered by a tide of emotion completely new to me. I can’t shoot him. I feel like I have been kicked in my stomach, back and head all at once. I collapse on the floor. I feel I am not in complete control over my actions any more. I feel vulnerable. I can’t shoot him.

I feel alone.

But the man from aisle seven shows me I am not. In an action that forces me to seriously doubt my theory of human nature, he kneels down and comforts me.

This is how we stay, sobbing uncontrollably, our tears mixing with the blood and urine on the supermarket floor, until the police arrive and handcuff us both to take us away.

A Revised Theory of Human Nature

The night after the shooting, my mind was in turmoil. I had lost control of myself in the supermarket. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. I tried to convince myself I’d just imagined the look in the man’s eyes.

When I finally managed to sleep, I dreamt about the girl in the park.

This time she was running through the supermarket towards me, holding something that had caught her eye in another aisle. She ran up to me and grabbed my trouser leg. But when she saw I wasn’t her daddy she looked around for a moment before spotting him, lying on the floor near the avocadoes. As she ran over to him, I followed her, and watched as she shook his body and held the object in front of his eyes. And I shuddered. I knew those eyes. They were seeing the dancing, talking fish. The girl became frustrated with her father and started punching him and crying, “Daddy, Daddy, get up! Daddy look stop lying on the floor Daddy get up!”

But he didn’t get up.

And the girl looked up at me and she knew. And her look touched something inside of me and I exploded and become thousands of tiny cockroaches all over the supermarket. There were men in suits and masks, walking slowly and spraying gas from long rods connected to packs on their backs. And they sprayed and used words like “infestation” and asked questions like, “how have we let it get so bad? What have we done wrong? How much worse is it going to be next time?”

Men walked behind them in white coats and just talked. Some said, “it’s the parents, the parents. If it weren’t for the parents we wouldn’t have this problem.” And others said, “it’s the environment. It’s the supermarket — it is so conducive to these infestations.” And some nodded and some shook and together they worried about the problem. Because they couldn’t see.

Where one roach is allowed to survive, a thousand will come to live.

I scurried away from their sickening fumes. I moved in a tide to the car park. There, I pulled myself together and started to walk home.

Every time I passed a person on the way, I saw the world through their eyes. I had their thoughts: they looked at me and their thoughts were nothing.
They didn’t know who I was.

They didn’t care.

George has been coming to visit me regularly. He wants to reform me: turn me into a fine, Upstanding Citizen. I don’t know what the point of it is. It isn’t like they’ll ever let me out.

I think that, for the first time, he has found a purpose in his life — me. I decided to play along for a while.

He has been trying to teach me that other people are just like me. I nod and smile and pretend, occasionally, that he has said something transforming. But of course, I can’t believe what he says — despite my confusion in the supermarket. I would be a bad person if I believed him.

But George truly believes he is reforming me. And so, I guess, do the guards — lately they have been letting us speak face-to-face, instead of having a divider between us. This is good, because it makes my plan to finish what I should have done in the supermarket a whole lot easier.

Today when he arrives, he says he has an important question for me which he thinks I am now ready to answer. I nod and wait. He asks, am I Sorry for what I did?
Perfect.

“George,” I answer, “I would do it again if I had the chance.”

The sudden grief in his face reminds me of the mother in the supermarket.
I pull out a length of wire I’ve been keeping in my shoe.

Suddenly he jumps out of his chair towards me. His expression has been transformed from grief to pure, animal hatred.

The wire got tangled up in my shoe. I drop it.
Where did he go?

Arms grab me from behind. They are surprisingly strong. Their surprising strength is on my neck. I try to turn around but his hold makes it impossible.
For the second time, I find I am not in control of a situation.
He is choking me.

The guards are only beginning to stir. Why are they so slow? Don’t they know who I am?

I am having trouble breathing. The guards should be doing something. Don’t they understand how important I am? What would become of the world if I was no longer in it?

My vision is beginning to cloud up. Through the blur, I see a guard has finally arrived. He pulls out his hitting stick and tries to use it to beat George off me. But his aim is bad. He keeps missing George and hitting me.

This can’t happen to me.

I keep struggling. George is still strangling me and the guard is still hitting me. I am summoning up all my strength to break George’s hold and escape this whole nightmare when I notice something standing behind the guard.
It is a dancing, talking fish.

It is trying to sell me tap-water filters.

The victim

Wayne walked out of the interview room feeling dazed. It was the second time the psychiatrist had seen him and he had tried his hardest to explain to him that he wasn’t crazy, just excessively worried about irrational things. Wayne knew it didn’t make sense to worry that failing to shake cans of deodorant and hairspray could somehow cause random strangers to burst into flames. But the psychiatrist had convinced himself, without Wayne really having much opportunity to say anything, that Wayne was suffering from grandiose delusions. The next thing Wayne knew he was hearing phrases like “schizophrenia”, “involuntary treatment” and “depot antipsychotic”. Wayne wasn’t entirely sure what these things meant, but knew enough to suspect it wasn’t good.

He had tried the olanzapine they were giving him twice a day. He found it made him feel strange and zombie-like, so he explained to the nurses that he didn’t think this was the right treatment for him. That was yesterday. Now the psychiatrist had berated him for his “non-compliance” and switched him to “wafers”.

Wayne rubbed his hands through his hair and sat down on a seat in the common area. A few metres away, the tv was blaring. A few patients were lying in front of it, staring blankly into space. One older-looking man had pulled a chair up close to the television and was staring intently at the screen. He periodically talked back to the presenters of the news program that was showing. “Thank you. Thank you. Should I go today?”

Wayne knew that most of the other patients would be in the courtyard chain-smoking. He wished Sandra was here to talk to. He stared at the worn carpet tiles, wondering when, and how, he was going to get out of this place.

A movement outside caught Wayne’s eye. A tall, pimple-faced young man wearing faded track-pants burst through the doorway from the courtyard, tossing a bag of White Ox tobacco in one hand, his other hand in his pocket. He strode through the ward with a confident swagger. Spotting Wayne sitting alone, he made a beeline for him.

“Brother, brother! Welcome to boot camp! Why you lookin’ so glum brother?” He laughed shrilly. “Oh yeah – you’re here with us. That’s okay we can all be friends. Gotta work together, gotta be a team. Can’t let them break us brother.” He thrust out a hand to Wayne, “My name’s Daniel. Or that’s what people call me.” Daniel leaned conspiratorially toward Wayne and tried to whisper, but was still loud enough to be heard across the room: “I’ll tell you my real name if I know I can trust you.”

“I’m Wayne,” repiled Wayne, shaking Daniel’s hand. “I–”

“Waynnnne! Well, I know I can trust you then, brother.” Daniel leaned in again and hissed, “My name is really William Frowley, but still call me Daniel because of them-” he jerked his head towards the nurse’s station. “If they know who I am they’ll let them know I’m here.”

“Let who know you’re here?”

“The vigilantes. I’m not crazy. Not like some of them here.” Daniel nodded towards the catatonic figures in front of the tv. “I’ve been gang stalked for seven years now. Heard of it?”

Wayne admitted he hadn’t, and without hesitation Daniel told his story. Eight years ago he had been working as a research assistant while completing his science degree at university. One night while he was working late in the lab he had discovered something amiss with the data for their project. He went back through the hard-copy files in the project filing cabinet. At the back of the cabinet was a metal box he had seen the project manager take out from time-to-time. He knew it was kept locked, but on this night he discovered it had been left unlatched. Curious, Daniel looked inside.

What Daniel found had shocked him. It contained a bound booklet about the size of a trash novel, “You know, the chunky-thick kind you buy to read on international flights.” The main body of the book contained information Daniel had seen before about the project he was working on, but the opening pages were a letter from a federal member of parliament detailing the reasons for the project and the expected outcomes.

Daniel attempted at this point to whisper again. “The project was to create a self-replicating protein that if administered as an intramuscular injection would eliminate the sixth-sense.” Daniel paused, ever so briefly, giving Wayne a knowing look. Wayne replied with a look of puzzlement that Daniel ignored, continuing, “So of course I realised this was about silencing the masses, and I knew I had to do something. I thought I had a friend who would know what to do, so I told them about it. That was my mistake.”

Daniel explained that he was then placed on “the Register,” and then the gang stalking began.

At first Daniel didn’t notice anything was happening, but he started to feel that something wasn’t right. Then he began noticing when he came back to his unit at night that things were in different places to when he had left for work. It was just little things – a glass he had left on the kitchen table might have been moved to the other side of the table. Books were in a different order on his bookshelves.

Next Daniel started having car problems. One morning his car wouldn’t start – flat battery. When the RACV mechanic came, he told Daniel it was strange for a battery to be flat in a car that new when nothing had been left on. “That’s when I knew someone was up to something.”

Then Daniel started to notice he was being followed. But it wasn’t just one person. As he left his house to walk to the tram stop, a lady would fall in some distance behind him. When he got to the tram stop she would keep walking as though she had just been on her way somewhere. But there would be a little signal, like passing a baton. She would “happen” to make a phone call just before a man at the tram stop answered their phone. “I picked up the eggs,” the man might say – just that – and hang up. Then he would stand within vision of Daniel on the tram until Daniel got off. He would pretend he was looking elsewhere, but Daniel knew he was being watched.

Daniel found this pattern continued until, as far as he could work out, he was being followed and watched 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Sometimes surveillance would be by satellite. Daniel knew this because sometimes, at night, a particular star would seem to track him while others stayed still. Also, when he walked past radios or televisions he sometimes noticed a cryptic message being broadcast describing what he was doing. “One day,” Daniel told Wayne, “I was at Harvey Normal looking to buy a new fridge, trying to get one with a good energy rating. Just as I was opening one I thought I liked to look inside the program on the tvs in the next aisle cut to an ad for Today Tonight – an ad saying that they had proof that buyers were being lied to with fridge energy ratings.” Daniel gave Wayne another knowing look, then continued his story.

Finally, Daniel drew the connection between the growing harassment and his disclosure to his “friend” about the research. He had asked his friend to find out who he should tell. The friend had promised to look into it and, after that, Daniel never saw him again. Realising that the government was trying to silence him, Daniel decided he had to fight back.

“I did some research and found out about faraday cages. So I coated my entire bedroom with aluminium foil. That way the satellites couldn’t broadcast my thoughts to the stalkers when I was in my room. Obviously they didn’t like that, so they organised for me to be admitted to hospital. That was the first time I ended up in here – six and-a-half years ago now.”

As strange as this all sounded to Wayne, and as bug-eyed as Daniel was in his telling of it, the story was somehow compelling. Dazed enough about ending up in this ward himself, Wayne was feeling even more dazed by this bizarre tale. He was fascinated to hear more, hoping to be able to piece together some evidence of whether Daniel was mad or harassed. Of course, the satellite stuff sounded completely mad – but somehow Wayne felt like much of what Daniel was telling him could be true. At this point, however, they were both interrupted by the arrival of the psychiatrist who told Daniel it was time for his review.

Wayne made his way to the nurse’s station to ask if he could make a phone call. He was hoping he would be able to contact Sandra – he still didn’t know if she’d been charged.

Admission

12/11/2004 17:30 22 year old male brought in by police after being charged with vandalising public property. Police observed Wayne behaving oddly prior to his arrest and report that his unusual behaviour escalated during interview until they became concerned about his mental health.

MSE

22 year old male appears stated age. Dress inappropriate for today’s 30 degree heat: wearing a thick woolen winter coat and black parachute pants. Behaviour agitated, restless, but no aggression evident. Poor eye contact – patient looking down at hands for most of interview. Reduced speech production with lack of spontaneity. Incoherent at times. Normal rate, low volume. Mood euthymic. Denies suicidal or homicidal ideation. Affect reactive. Cognition normal: MMSE 30/30. Nil FTD. No evidence of hallucinations. Denies same. Some grandiose and paranoid delusions: Believes that he can and must prevent unspecified harm to others by shaking aerosols. Believes he knows this because of messages written on the aerosol cans. Poor insight: states he does not have a mental illness, believes he just has a problem with “addictive habits”. Has refused all oral medication since admission. Judgment impaired – it appears he was acting on delusions and ?command hallucinations when he was picked up by police engaged in an act of vandalism in Brunswick.

Past psychiatric history

Wayne presents with no known psych history. He reports no prior presentations to mental health services. Denies any family history of mental illness. He states his first symptoms began around 18 months ago when he found himself worrying excessively about the potential consequences if he failed to shake his personal aerosols (e.g., deodorant, shaving cream).

Presenting problem

Wayne was picked up by police with a female friend vandalising the wall of a Brunswick business. At the police station Wayne was observed to be behaving in an anxious and suspicious manner. He was described as erratic and dangerous. He lunged at a police officer who removed a can of spraypaint from his backpack to take as evidence. After he was prevented from attacking the officer and placed in a cell for observation Wayne was seen to be pacing and talking to himself. Wayne says he had thought the officer was going to discharge the spray can, with disastrous consequences. When asked why he was talking to himself he states he was trying to find the right thing to say to prevent anything bad happening.

Impression

• Schizophreniform disorder
• No medical problems
• Requires further treatment – has not been compliant with medication so far
• Absconding risk

Plan

• Commence olanzapine wafers 10mg BD
• CT head
• Half hourly obs for risk of absconding/aggression

Wayne’s date

I found myself in this really uncomfortable situation today. Again. Why can’t I just act like myself with chicks? Anyway, I’m going out with Sandra, right, for the first time — this is like a full-on date so I’m excited and all — we’re catching the train (she’s so great, likes public transport because its better environmentally — so no need to impress her with a car, eh?) and the moment I sit down next to her: kabang! My mind goes blank. It’s like when you go in the video store, right? You walk in, you know you want that classic movie — whatever — and you just forget the minute you walk through those plastic security things. End up walking out with “The Night of the Cows”.

So I’m sitting there and my mind is blank. All I could find to fill the terrible void was the knowledge that, hey! I’m sitting next to a gorgeous chick here and what’s more she knows me and what’s more she is still happy to sit next to me! But I figured that was no good to have a conversation about. So I’m sitting there and well aware that for every second that goes by in which I say nothing, the relevance of whatever I do end up breaking the silence with must increase exponentially if I don’t want to sound mundane. It’s like, if two people sit in silence for fifteen minutes and one suddenly says, “Nice weather, innit?” the other will inevitably think, “what a complete twit,” or something to that effect. Once two people have been silent for more than about thirty minutes, the only hope for starting a conversation successfully is for one of them to be struck by lightning, allowing the other to ask of their ensuing well-being and perhaps also comment, “ ‘s a nuisance when that happens — really puts a damper on the rest of your day, don’t it?”

A thirty second pause like I had to deal with isn’t nearly so irrecoverable, but I knew I had to act soon. So when a conversation topic of even mild potential hit me, I jumped on it without a moment’s hesitation. In order to give my statement at least the appearance of some context, I made a point of first subjecting the interior of the train to significant observation. I turned my head this way and that, looked at the lighting, the seating, the hand-holds. I applied a look of intense bewilderment to my face. It worked — Sandra looked at me, followed my eyes in an effort to determine what was so interesting.

I looked back at Sandra and observed, as casually as I could manage, that for the least populated, least profitable and most dangerous train line, we seemed to consistently be getting the newest and most comfortable trains all of a sudden.

She looked at me with mild surprise. She couldn’t believe I didn’t know the story behind that fact. But, believe it or not, I didn’t. She said it was all in the papers. That was great — more conversation! I got to tell her that I didn’t read the newspaper or watch the news on tv. So then she told me how it all came about.

Sandra pointed out that the new trains no longer had the scrolling electronic advertising signs at either end of the carriages. These had been in Melbourne trains for as long as I’d lived in Melbourne – so at least since 1998 – and had proclaimed a single message day and night without variation in all that time: “Put your name here and be seen by over 1 million people a week!” Never once had anyone bought advertising time on the system.

Sandra explained that it just so happened that a start-up IT company in the city finally bought advertising on the electronic signs for next to nothing with a contract guaranteeing certain minimum daily exposure on particular targeted (i.e., wealthy) lines. The advertising department were so excited about someone finally showing interest that they jumped on the contract without hesitation – hopeful it might lead to future interest. Unfortunately this all happened too late for the production of the new trains, which had dumped the electronic signs for paste-up advertising due to lack of interest. The new trains now used a similar sign in the centre of carriages to display the names of upcoming stations. The powers that be in Connex believed that having similar signs displaying advertising would create too much confusion, and refused to retrofit the new trains with them. The company with the advertising contract to Connex to court over the issue and the end result was that all the new trains were to be put on lines that weren’t in the advertising agreement until the contract period had completed.

Anyway, it was a nice save for my awkward silence. Her enthusiasm for the whole story was very encouraging, and it was easy to find things to talk about after that.

Gordon’s Diary – II

13/06/2008

I’ve done a decent bit of research now on the key principles behind getting a religious following. These are:

• Appeal to people who have some existing core beliefs (i.e. already Christian or New-Age, don’t go for the atheists obviously)
• Identify some common themes where the doctrines of people’s churches don’t entirely match up with their personal views – things like sexuality, race, parenting and wealth creation are some examples.
• Develop a set of “new truths” that keep the core of these people’s existing beliefs in-tact but modifies the bits they were uncomfortable with so that they can think, “I was right all along!”
• Develop new prophetic interpretations that allow people to have a sense of certainty about their future while at the same time threatening fear and horrors in their lifetime if they don’t continue in what I teach them. Guarantee easy life, protection and great rewards provided they do continue in what I teach them.
• Use scripture judiciously to “prove” my “new truths” and prophecies.
• Don’t set dates or make claims that can be disproven by any actual event (or failure of an event) like Ronald Weinland’s fatal mistake
• Invest in some well-targeted publicity that reaches the people I’m after. A Google Ads campaign is probably the simplest approach here.

These are all pretty good guarantees of a following. Of course, I’ll be doing this for money as well as the enjoyable sense of having power over people’s minds. So I will need to develop some doctrine that requires people to give me money. Ideally this should tie very tightly into the fear-factor of my prophecies yet at the same time into the guarantees of riches and easy living. I already have a great idea for this one – I’ll use the parable of the talents to prove that God wants his True Church to develop an investment scheme into which they place most of the money that God has given them. If I structure this right my following should have at least the impression they are reaping huge immediate financial rewards for giving money to me. I’ll put together some sort of investment company that all the members can invest in, from which I of course take a good sized cut. I figure I could maybe learn from some of the techniques used by Storm Financial.

Supermarket

Each day when Sandra got home she emptied out all the annoying silver coins that made her purse weigh a ton into a small bucket. Her plan was to use the collected money to shout herself to something extra-special when she filled the bucket.

Now, the bucket was close to full and she couldn’t think of a good way to exchange so many coins for cash. Her best idea was to slowly “evolve” the collection into larger currency units. She figured, for example, that each day she could replace each gold coin in her purse with the equivalent in silver coins. Then, she could use these whenever she purchased something at a vending machine or the like.

Today she needed to buy a weekly train ticket on her way to work. At nine dollars ninety, she figured it was the perfect way to get rid of forty-two twenty-cent coins and three fifty-cent coins. She dropped a ten-dollar note in the change bucket, and took out a hefty total of forty-six coins. Too bulky to fit in her purse, she dropped the handful in the side pocket of her handbag.

At the train station, a billboard asked in bold white letters: “Want to know what makes women tick?” Somebody, thoughtful enough to carry a can of spray-paint with them wherever they went, had scrawled the reply, “it’s their pacemakers.”

Sandra considered the implications of this as she continued feeding coins into the ticket machine. She felt she was lucky to be able to use the machine at all. It wasn’t uncommon for her to arrive at the station in need of a new ticket, only to find the machine a scorched and molten mess. She figured the elderly passengers who frequent this line must have a particularly strong objection to the new machines. Sandra grinned at her mental image of a disgruntled old lady and her husband petrol-bombing a ticket machine.

The cumulative counter seemed to be taking forever to get to the target value.

$7.70… $7.90… $8.10… $8.30… clunk.

Something that Sandra felt didn’t make sense was that, suddenly, her coins wouldn’t go through the slot. She grunted her dissatisfaction at this turn of events as she jiggled and shoved a coin in a vain effort to get it to make its passage into the machine. Behind her, someone had arrived and was waiting for an opportunity to use the machine.

The counter disappeared to be replaced by the message, “Please wait: your money is being returned.” The machine jangled its cache of coins menacingly. Behind Sandra, the person sighed significantly.

Suddenly, and with great violence, the machine spat thirty-seven coins from its return slot. Coins danced and spun on the bitumen, and found their way into obscure crevices.

Sandra cursed the machine, and gave it a kick to let it know precisely how she felt. It simply responded with, “Please select a ticket.”

The person waiting for the machine stepped aside to watch as Sandra stooped to retrieve her coins. In the distance, Sandra heard the sound of a train whistle. So did the person waiting for the machine, stepping on Sandra’s hand in the rush to get to it and buy a ticket before it was too late. Already the crossing gates next to the station were sounding their warning bells and coming down to protect the intersecting traffic.

By the time Sandra collected all her coins, the train was long gone. She decided to abandon the train idea for the day, and instead purchase her ticket at the local shop and catch a tram. The shop attendant didn’t appear to appreciate the mountain of coins Sandra dumped on his counter, but obliged with a ticket, nevertheless.

The tram trip was not uneventful. Sandra lived in a town where the once majority white, male oppressor had allowed himself to become overrun by ethnic “minorities”. Sandra, with her blond hair, blue eyes and pale skin liked the feeling of being the odd one out when she rode the tram. Of course, not being male, she couldn’t completely fulfil the category of the oppressor. But you can’t have it all. On this occasion there was, in fact, only one individual on the tram who was truly qualified to fill the role of oppressor. He was not happy with his position, either, it seemed.

When Sandra first got on, she took a seat across from a scruffy looking gentleman who was sitting bent double. She spent a moment feeling sorry for his apparently debilitating condition – until she realised he was just having a very difficult time picking up a cigarette someone had dropped. After several minutes of bending and reaching, the man finally reached the treasure and straightened up. Things proceeded in a relatively normal fashion for a full two minutes before he decided to break the ice with his fellow passengers.

“Speak English!”

Up and down the tram, backs straightened and faces tensed… but overall, the man was ignored. Across from Sandra, an earnest conversation in Turkish was interrupted just briefly enough to allow a sideways glance at Another One of Them.

The man waited only a short time to see if anyone had paid any attention before repeating his demand. “Speak English! You’re in Australia now, so speak English!” This time the pair speaking Turkish stopped completely to glare at the man.

“Surely if there is a language we must speak in this country it would be Australian, hmm?”

The logic was lost on the man. He knew a response was expected of him, so he decided to stick to what he was familiar with. Nodding emphatically he assured them, “Speak English! You are in Australia now!”

Around the man, argument erupted. People were happy to contradict each other in order to prove to this man that he was Silly. He was told (and Sandra thought it was a very good point) that it was interesting that of all the people on the tram he was the least fluent in the language he was so greatly in support of. He was dropping his ‘g’s. He was fond of double-negatives. He was losing an argument. One man versus an entire tram. People began to really enjoy their trip. New friendships formed up and down the tram. People sided with strangers. Years later, perhaps, they would remember this day over a cup of coffee together.

“Conflict is a strong uniting force,” Sandra’s brain told her as her stop approached. She didn’t want to get off. She wanted to make friends with a grinning, debating stranger, too. She disembarked reluctantly. Duty called.

Once off the tram, Sandra ran the short distance from the stop to where she worked. She managed to arrive only two minutes late. The girl whose shift she was relieving gave her a look of immense relief as she came through the doors at a sprint.

Sandra often wondered to herself if getting the supermarket job was really worth it, even if there weren’t any alternatives. It was okay when she was working at the checkout – no one noticed her problem then – but when she was stacking shelves or pricing products, she was in full view of the customers. Some of them even stopped what they were doing to watch her. Admittedly she was a strange sight – doing her peculiar dance across the tiled floor on her tip-toes. But today it looked like Sandra was going to get a break from being stared out. For once it was her turn to stare.

There was a young gentleman looking distraught in aisle four – the one which contained the shampoos, toothpastes, hairsprays and deodorants. This man seemed particularly preoccupied with the hairsprays and deodorants. He wasn’t just taking forever while he calculated relative value for money on each item – Sandra had seen that often enough – rather, he appeared to be handling every single item on the shelves. He systematically took a can, shook it, replaced it, and grabbed the next. Sandra watched, fascinated.

There was a lapse in customers, and Sandra’s checkout ceased to be in demand. Intent on finding out what the gentleman was doing, she put up the “checkout closed” sign and headed for aisle four.

“Can I help you, sir?”

The man jumped at the sound of Sandra’s voice, his hand stopping mid-reach. He pulled his arm slowly back to his side, still holding a can of “Impulse” deodorant, and turned to face the person who had startled him. He found himself looking at a supermarket attendant – an attractive young lady around his own age, possibly a little older. She had short dark hair, tied back simply and economically. She was slender, and had a sweet smile. Her name tag identified her as “William”. Nevertheless, he was fairly confident she was actually a girl. He found himself quite instantly attracted to her, which he figured was typical. He always met the most promising people in the most embarrassing situations. He sought an explanation for his behaviour that might not sound entirely lame. He couldn’t find one, so he went for second-best.

“I was… just… testing products. I am looking to branch out and try new things in the deodorant and hairspray department.” It would have been a fine excuse, he felt, if only she hadn’t happened along while he was in the ladies’ section, holding a can of undeniably feminine deodorant. “Vanilla Kisses,” he read, holding it up for her inspection. “I know it isn’t every man’s choice, but I am finding myself in a deep rut when it comes to hygiene products.” He tried to grin, but only managed a lopsided twitch which, he felt, must have compounded his appearance as Severely Disturbed.

But Sandra responded with an even sweeter smile. “While I think you may find yourself pleasantly surprised by its lovely aroma, I think there may be something here more suitable for you.” She took the can from his hand and returned it to the shelf, then moved along, beckoning him to follow, to the male deodorant section. She picked up an obscure looking can from the far end of the shelf, and took his hand to spray some on his palm. He pulled his hand back in alarm.

“No! No, it’s okay… I’ll just… take your word for it.”

She looked slightly disappointed, but handed him the can, which he held awkwardly: he didn’t have a shopping basket. He hadn’t even come here to shop – he’d just happened to think of all those unshaken cans as he was walking past, and couldn’t help himself. But she couldn’t find that out. Sandra saw his discomfort and offered to go get a basket for him. He smiled thank you.

Wayne began to feel agitated while he waited for her. He moved away from the aerosols, but it didn’t help. He felt a tremendous need to finish shaking them all, but knew that if he shook even another one there would be no talking his way out of it. He decided all that could be done was to buy a few items and leave as quickly as he possibly could.

As she returned with the basket, Wayne noticed for the first time that something wasn’t quite right about the way Sandra walked. She took very deliberate, light steps… mostly on her toes. She looked like she was dancing to some bizarre beat that only she could hear. The thought of this supermarket attendant hearing hallucinatory music in her head cheered Wayne up considerably – maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about seeming like a weirdo after all.

“Thank you, um… William,” he said as she handed him the basket.

“It’s Sandra,” she replied, “Obviously Tommo has decided to play the name tag swap prank again today. I should have remembered to check – he has a repertoire of around three pranks that he systematically cycles through each week.” She laughed infectiously. “It’s actually so old now that I find it hilariously funny every time. You know – a bit like when you repeat a word so many times it starts to sound funny?”

“Yes,” said Wayne, who didn’t know, but felt admitting it would somehow brand him as ignorant. There was an uncomfortable pause, during which Wayne experienced a chaotic stream of conflicting thoughts and urges out of which an impulse unexpectedly manifested in action and he found himself speaking again.

“Well, ah… I’m going to just wander around and buy some things but … when do you? Well, I mean, if you aren’t busy after you … you seem very interesting and I would enjoy talking to you some more if you’d like to catch up some time. Maybe … ?”

Gordon’s diary – I

25/03/2008

Up early today, couldn’t sleep. Got up and watched this “Benny Hinn” guy on Channel 10. Surprised they let such obvious scammers on tv. He said if I sent $10,000 he would put my name in his private jet and pray for me when he’s flying. Well, better odds than lotto I suppose.

Was thinking maybe I should look into this line of work. Been needing something since the parking ticket gig fell apart.

Did some googling. Decided I’d do better to set myself up as end-time prophet than faith-healer, given the current social climate of end-of-the-world-to-global-warming panic. I thought this Ronald Weinland fellow was on the right track. He’s been predicting for some years now nuclear attacks on the US by next month and the end of the world in 2011 (he’s even published some books!). His timeline ends too soon. Tough for him: his income’s about to dry up. I’ll learn from that mistake: never set dates.

Benny Hinn operates by being huge. Do a gig of 50,000 and if just 1% of people are convinced to give $1,000, you have a taking of half-a-million. Weinland operates small. Even so, if he can convince just 500 people the end is coming and to sell up their assets and give him the money plus 10% of their ongoing income, he should have a cashflow well over a million annually. I could live with that.

I’ll follow his progress for a while to see what works, then see if I can set myself up with a similar gig.

More on Ronald Weinland: Ronald Weinland biography

Help from the wall

In all my years of policing, I had never come across this kind of punk before. The usual punk I come across is a wannabe-somebody graffiti vandal, less than 5’5″, hiding their spotty face behind a dark fleece hoody. Of course there are older punks, but I never come across them: Their greater age doesn’t just give them greater “skilz”, but greater invisibility. My usual punk makes a pretty poor effort at not being seen, but this pair were hopeless. They were trying so hard to be inconspicuous, but doing such an amateur job, that I felt embarrassed for them. To me it seemed like every passer-by must be staring at them. The bloke was wearing a pair of oversized black pants and a black wool coat so big on him that he looked like he’d had his head shrunk by New Guinean cannibals. He’d turned up the collar – I’m supposing because he was thinking he could hide behind it. The girl was wearing black parachute pants and a navy blue puffy jacket, too long in the arms, that was clearly slowing down her work with the paintbrush. Mind you, she was slow enough already – each time her brush neared the mortar between bricks she would slow her stroke right down, stop, breathe, talk to herself, then continue her stroke over the mortar and into the next brick.

This pair of punks was fascinating to watch. I suggested to my partner that we needed to keep an eye on them to collect evidence before charging them, and we moved to where we could watch them unseen.

While the girl worked with a paintbrush, the bloke was squatting down, watching her, glancing around nervously and checking his watch every couple of seconds. He also looked like he was reciting some kind of mantra to himself the whole time. He had a spray paint can on the ground next to him. I’d seen him shake it before she started her work, but then he just sat it there and did nothing with it. Maybe he was mentally working through the ethics of what they were doing. I would have assumed they were both flipped out on drugs except they both obviously lacked the street knowledge to even know how to ingest a drug, let alone source and purchase them.

Eventually the bloke took one last look at his watch, made one more visual survey of their surroundings and then grabbed his can, stood up and started making his mark on the wall. Predictably, his paint had already started to settle in the can and he couldn’t get an even finish out of it. He clearly wasn’t willing to give it another shake, and by the time he’d managed to tilt the can in such a way as to get a reasonable spread of colour, the girl had nearly finished her piece.

It was interesting contrast, his half-completed stick-man to her vignette of a grassy green hill and blue sky. She finished up by painting a “window” around her scene with another can of black spray-paint, and then adding some words.

The whole while they were doing this, the pair of them were quite obviously becoming increasingly agitated. Their glances around them became increasingly frequent and, at one point I got ready to give chase because they took one long look at each other and seemed to silently agree to abandon their little project. But, just as I was ready to leap out after them, they seemed to resolve to continue, and finished their work.

As soon as they started putting their equipment back into the black backpacks they had brought with them, my partner and I strode across the street and made our arrest. Having watched them all that time, it somehow didn’t surprise me that they didn’t even try to run. Instead they both looked dreadfully embarrassed and apologetic. I actually found myself feeling sorry for them. But, the law is the law, and my dedication to upholding it overrode my sense of pity.

We photographed their little piece of “art” to accompany the charges. They had added to a previously existing piece of vandalism, but were insistent that the original work was not their own and they couldn’t be charged for it. Given today’s performance, I had no trouble believing them, because I know they would have been caught the first time.

Help did come (Click image for story with original graffiti)

Sandra’s date

I can’t believe how long I spent getting dressed for the evening. Normally I don’t fall within that stupid girlie stereotype of taking hours to get dressed, deliberating over the smallest detail. But I was feeling fragile. My first date with Wayne had gone so well… I’d felt we could really relate to each other, and that seemed like a bad sign. I mean: I felt we could really relate to each other — like in the “he’s perfect for me” kind of way that I so hate other people talking about. I’ve always been the cynic who thinks other people are just fooling themselves when they say that (and inevitably it turns out that they are). So I felt like my sense of the perfection of this person was really only a sign of how utterly foolish I myself had become. I felt that the slightest mistake could mess it up forever — hair worn wrong, wrong shoes, wrong skirt… or if I said the wrong thing — it would be over, and I would have to face that terrible admission that I’d been wrong in the first place. I would have to convince myself Wayne was, in fact, a total loser. That, of course, is the only way to cope with a failed relationship — vilify the other person, say, “Why didn’t I see how arrogant and malicious he was to begin with,” and pretend you’d been blind and now suddenly you can see, and that… that is why it didn’t work out. Not because you were stupid enough to not give him the chance to give you his genuine apology after he made some little mistake.

So I’m going off on a tangential rant here. Excuse me. My point is to give you an idea of why I was so paranoid about getting everything right. I gave myself three hours to get ready before I needed to meet him at the train station, and that almost wasn’t enough. But I managed, somehow. Perhaps it was worth it, too. In the end I wore my pin-stripe pants (I decided to ride my bike to the station, so a skirt was out of the question), a simple top, just a touch of make-up and left my hair out. Simple as it may have been, it seemed to hit Wayne like a brick. His jaw actually dropped, momentarily. I thought that was something that only happened in tacky romance-comedies. He regained his composure quite quickly, though, and we settled down to a comfortable conversation about some of the graffiti adorning the station. He had been particularly disturbed by some graffiti promoting “Critical Mass” — a bunch of cyclists who periodically take over city and suburban streets and tell the cars they can rack off for a while so the cyclists can make some point or other. The graffiti said, “Cars smell funny! Support Critical Mass! 100 cities can’t be wrong!”

Wayne said this had been puzzling him while he’d waited for me. He wanted to know what 100 cities weren’t wrong about, and why it was they couldn’t be wrong. I said it must be that 100 cities had Critical Mass operating in some form, to which he responded that if that were the case, 100 cities could very well be wrong… in fact, almost certainly had to be wrong if one were to reason purely by number. If 100 cities can’t be wrong, surely 101 cities can’t be wrong either. In fact, given that any number, x, of cities can’t be wrong, we could safely assume that x+1 cities must also be right. By this reasoning, if 100 cities can’t be wrong, we could say that the 100 cities with Critical Mass are, indeed, right. But, we have a problem. Assuming there at least 200 cities in the world, if only 100 have Critical Mass that leaves at least 100 without. That means the cities without Critical Mass are also right. It would be a safe assumption that more cities don’t have Critical Mass than do, and should we on the basis of being a majority give them the benefit of the doubt? If we were to do that, we would have to admit that 100 cities were indeed wrong… but if we instead say those cities without Critical Mass are wrong, we are still having to say 100 cities (and more) were wrong. Wayne’s conclusion was that the graffiti was wrong to begin with. 100 cities can easily be wrong.

“People shouldn’t be allowed to paint misleading graffiti like that where just any old fool could read it and not have the intelligence to pick the flaw in reasoning,” Wayne told me. “It’s worse than false advertising. People really believe graffiti.”

I reminded him that people weren’t allowed to paint misleading graffiti like that, and in fact, weren’t allowed to paint graffiti at all. This seemed to comfort him, somewhat. But he did contend that he liked graffiti, and it would be a real shame if nobody broke the law, at least in that respect.

We were still discussing some of our favourite graffiti when the train arrived. Wayne said one of his favourites was one that said, “Legalise it rally: March 23, city square.” He liked it because one could never tell whether it was more than a year old or not, and the graffitier hadn’t bothered to include a year. I still think my favourite is one I saw many years ago, around the time of the Gulf War: “Give blood… join the army.”

I told Wayne about my graffiti experience during my ride to meet him at the station. On my way to the Upfield bike path I saw a piece of graffiti off Sydney road near the Brunswick tram depot. It was a simple, black stick figure painted on a bright yellow wall. The figure was crying pale blue tears, standing under a brief verse:

In one dark night
I lost all my love
please help me wall

Please help me wall (click image for actual location)

“I don’t think I have quite the passion for graffiti that you seem to,” I admitted to Wayne, “But I have to say I felt compelled to respond to this one. I wanted someone to provide some reply to suggest that the wall somehow had helped.”

Wayne nodded, “I know that one,” he said. “and I’ve felt the same – if I could ever bring myself to graffiti the first thing I would want to do is provide a response to that.”

We had to change trains in the city. Since the second was a late train going out of the city, it contained many inebriated individuals. One rugged looking gentleman sitting across from us had fallen asleep, VB stubby in hand, and obviously had forgotten he was on a train and not at home in his flat. The train was pretty noisy, particularly around corners. Now and then, when the train bumped or groaned loudly, the man would roll his head in frustration and thump the side of the carriage wildly with his arm. “Shuudup! Shuddup! I’m tryna sleep here!”

Further up the train, a man with bright red hair was fascinated by the same sounds that were so upsetting the other man. He was trying to imitate them. He particularly enjoyed the beeping of the train doors. At each station, he would try to replicate the sound by whistle. Across from him, a naïve young couple looked concerned for their safety.

Our destination was Wayne’s idea. I liked it very much for its simplicity. We were going out to a park he knew that was sheltered from the intrusive lights of the city. He had brought a little gas camping heater and a picnic basket so we could eat, talk and look at the stars. The night had turned out perfectly clear for the occasion and, sitting on the train, I couldn’t wait. Wayne continued talking, now about his vision of a future where all governments were privatised, and ethnicity was a function of one’s employer, not physical location or race. As much as I liked listening, I was starting to feel several nights running of late shifts at work catching up with me. Finally, I couldn’t help myself. All I could hear was the pleasant rhythm of his voice, as I lost grasp of the content. I fell asleep on his shoulder, listening to him talk. He didn’t mind.