He couldn't be more devestated, just by the act of living. Simple, incomplete, the eternal yearning that masked his fate. God meant you to die a street alcoholic, living out those final years in Belmore Park, nearby the newspaper offices where he had worked most of his life; at various times making something of a name for hismelf. It was all so cruel, but destiny could not be defied. He coujldn't mask his own yearning, for oblivion, for love, by the shocking empathy they called the soldier, his own demise. So when he walked past the bar on the way to the meeting, and the desire to drink hit him like a sledge hammer, like a log being swung into the side of his head, he was completely taken aback. He knew he was off the air, had been for hours, but the vividness of his desire was something new.
There were tourists and sales reps and the interesting looking middle class all sitting around the bar, already lit up as the last light of the day fled, and he just wanted to be in there amongst them, ordering another beer, talking to total strangers, becoming immersed in the tales of others. Because he had none of his own left to tell; he would instead drape himself in the lives of others; and in this case, in the lives of complete strangers, both to himself and to the city. Random strangers, random acts of kindness. The Americans would talk in their loud voices about the things familiar to them, Obama, how terrible Bush was, or how misunderstood, depending on their poliitcal persuasion. And he would introduce them to the best local beers; and tell stories about being a journalist, and wash his own misery down a sinkhole of fabulousness, until all was well.
But all was not well; and his deeply dysfunctional brain longed for oblivion. Not for nothing oblivion seeking had been his primary goal for so many years. And now, frighteningly sober, he did not know where to turn. He kept thinking of Ben, always Ben, throughout this period of days when he had dived so spectacularly off the air, Ben, former NSW Premier Bob Carr's old press secretary. They had been great mates, although they met in the latter days when they were trying to stay sober, and Ben was bouncing in and out of detoxes and nothing was well in his life; the tiny apartment, the stuffed up relationships, the music CDs meant to indicate taste. And Ben had drunk himself to death just like that, not a bad feat for a man in his 30s still relatively healthy. But he could not stop; did not want to stop; and the rivers of enthusiasm and ignorance and intelligence and spirited conversations that were their times together; well he didn't know why it ended so quickly. Another death. Another dead alcoholic.
And so the bastard magistrates pound on from the bench: I see no hope, I see nothing but a long history of drugs, alcohol and dishonesty. And these brutal bastards always dictate the terms; always rule the rust and determine the outcome; while the rest of us slither from one pole to the next, uncertain of ourselves and our place in the world. Perhaps it was that uncertainty he had liked about Ben the most. All the ego had been deflated out of him; and when he admitted he had been drinking turps because he couldn't afford normal alcohol, then here, he knew, was a genuine problem, a terminal soul in acute decline, flirting with death as he drank himself into oblivion. He didn't mean to die, but equally he didn't want to stay sober. And so they marched forward; but there was nowhere to go. And he left him in that scrappy little nondescript inner-city apartment for the last time, thinking all was well. He'd said he would go back to detox, back to meetings, back to life. And the next he knew he was dead.
And he'd had everything. The good job, as the Premier's press secretary, better paying than most of the reporting jobs available, interesting, if you were interested in being near the seat of power. So smart. His knowledge burbled across streams; smart references to books, political events, characters of the right. And then he was dead. And there was nothing anybody could do. Nothing anybody could say. No meeting he could be dragged along to, no remorse he could feel, no madness he could absolve. And that was how it ended, not with a bang but a whimper. And so he walked past the bar with its shiny lights and happy looking people, its air of celebration, and went off to the meeting and sat in the hall and thought: this is therapy, how could this possibly be therapy? And all was lost, and Ben was lost, and he didn't drink; and was deeply unhappy. This too will pass, someone said, when he tried to explain the depth and complexity of his latest despair.
Kinkumber, NSW, Australia.
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