~ the toxic shrub

[… continued from earlier post]

Returning to those improvised demi-drugs which a certain character-type may consume before he or she can access or afford grown-up drugs…

- Bulbs, for instance, [which I never tried].

- Pure & Simple, [which I'm ashamed to say I did].

- Nutmeg, said to be used by ‘drug-starved prisoners’ and sailors at sea in the absence of alcohol, [I never tried it, not seriously].

- And poppy seed tea, [which I did not try because, thankfully, I had not heard of it at the time].

My HSC literature teacher, Brother McCarthy, a furious, opinionated Christian Brother, [who was certain an unattributed painting in the school lobby was a Tintoretto,] was speaking in class one day on the subject of intoxicants. I can’t recall the context, though certainly he would have been forbidding their use.

He made mention of the shrub ‘oleander’. He told us it was used in classical times to induce hallucinations and my ears pricked up. I knew the location of an oleander bush. It was right outside my parents window.

That night, predictably, I plucked some of its deep-green, leathery leaves. How many to consume? Circumspectly, I decided on just two – at least for starters - which I minced up and cooked with rice and vegetables.

Heaven knows where Brother McCarthy got his information, but he should have been more mindful before broadcasting it. Or perhaps it was a subtle policy conceived in the deep and ancient vaults of the Order, designed to rid the Earth of people like me before they reach maturity.

I was lucky I didn’t die. No, really. Down the track, I learned that oleander was a deadly poison. Consider these snippets from Wikipedia:

Oleander is one of the most poisonous plants … contains numerous extremely toxic compounds, many of which can be deadly to people … especially young children … The entire plant including the milky white sap is toxic … in some cases only a small amount can have lethal or near lethal effects … Oleander bark contains rosagenin which is known for its strychnine-like effects … There are innumerable reported suicidal cases of consuming mashed oleander seeds …

What I experienced was wracking nausea. Throughout the night, I vomited green bile out my bedroom window as my digestive tract roiled and spasmed. I told my parents that I’d eaten something that disagreed with me – and that was nothing less than the truth.

So, as you can see, from an early age I sought out any and all forms of altered consciousness with determination and ingenuity. As my body matured, I sought oblivion as avidly as I sought out sex.

My parents weren’t big drinkers, but they had a humble bar, consisting of various spirits and liqueurs. Of late, through lack of use, this had been removed to the shed.

On a few occasions, I had purloined bottles of my father’s beer, but had never really succeeded in getting a decent buzz on. What I wanted was to get solidly, thoroughly spiflicated - so one night, after my parents retired, I procured an empty milk bottle, crept out to the shed and filled it with just a little vodka, just a little Drambuie, a little vermouth, a little Benedictine and so on – so that the theft would go unnoticed

I left the house and made my way down to the region my friends and I had named The Quagmire. This was a zone of clay pits, degenerate plant life, rampant blackberries and mounds of dirt and building materials. Through it meandered the Grey Creek, which at that time was stodgy with effluent, sudsy with detergents, and which infused everything in its vicinity with a sweet faecal aroma.

I chose a dreadful mound of earth and perched myself upon it.

As I forced myself to drink the monster cocktail, I gazed out on the wasteland which was to become the Monash freeway, my mind constructing romance out of the reeking desolation. At that time in my life, I did everything with a sense of drama. As I drank I envisioned myself as a lonely, alienated teenager, stark under the nearby streetlamps of Foster’s road, betrayed by the dull monotony of the city, an unknown hero wrestling with conformity, deranged by his own genius …

Of course, this time I succeeded in rendering myself legless. I staggered home, crawled in my bedroom window and vomited my guts back out the way I came. Never again would I be able to bear the odour of Benedictine …

But once more this subject has proven itself too meaty for a single post. I’ll be back with more on gutter-drugs before you can say Jack Robinson.

* 1 May 1981 Friday 12.00am

This perpetual drunkenness is perpetrating a haze… still this group keeps churning its way through my life. it was the Matthew Flinders tonight – a rough looking punter told me I sounded like Bowie. It looks like Cathy may finally be thrown out of the band. Tonight was a good night.

Monday I went to Blitz night at inflation. Later I wound up with Lachelle – for better or worse. I snorted some novocaine – a strange experience and my nose still hurts.

Sunday I went out with Anthony, Kerry, Franka to Pokies – stealing drinks all night

Saturday I was hopelessly drunk, following myself from party to party – from Prahran to North Fitzroy. Somebody photographed me for Ragtimes magazine….

Friday we played at Monash Uni in the day and Paradise at night. Nothing to recount. It was good. But so?

The record is out – signed two hundred copies for this Saturday night. Will it be a good launch? I don’t know. Snakefinger and New Race are playing in town on the same night, we may have our work cut out for us …

Stop drinking, Sam.

*

The above was written in an almost illegible scrawl and some of it I had to guess at - I don’t think the word ‘punter’ was in common use in Melbourne yet, outside betting circles that is. I didn’t have to guess at my state while writing it.

Monday nights at Inflation. Blitz night. That was such a scene. I have no recollection of Ragtimes magazine.

Novocaine. I don’t remember that. I remember ‘Champagne & Novocaine’, which I think was the name of a Roxy Music bootleg …

I clearly recall that night at Pokies, [a gay club upstairs at the Prince of Wales]. We were absolutely skint, but wanted to go out. Anthony Smethurst was the ringleader; we’d wait for people to put down their drinks and turn away. Then we’d snatch them. Fun, huh? I didn’t enjoy it, I’ve always had this aversion to stealing.

Kerry was one of Anne & Christine Hardings' closest friends

New Race were a partial Radio Birdman reincarnation from Sydney. I think Dolores San Miguel ran the Paradise Club, but I've forgotten where it was…

Diary of 1981 - index

~ a hostess of unalloyed magnificence

Often, you have no idea how entangled you are with humdrum of daily life, until you step outside it. I've just spent an elysian weekend in Shoreham with Polly, Jenny, and various components of her family.

Jenny's mother, Di, recently sold her half share in a house down there, which had been in the family since the Seventies. It's been thoroughly renovated since, but still retains its special charm and its healing properties. We had only one night, but it did the trick, releasing the sour stale air from the grossly over-inflated balloon that was my soul.

The artist Joy Peck once owned the house and left her mark with a half dozen beautifully painted windows and a fridge that beggars belief it is so lovely - even if it no longer operates. Joy is very ill now, closing on an end to her earthly residency.

Di is a hostess of unalloyed magnificence. Ostensibly in celebration of her daughter Sarah's birthday, she prepared an extraordinary feast - prawns, trout, chicken - which in combination with alcohol & THC made for an evening of refined decadence. [In stark relief to the other coarser kind.]

Most of us wandered down the seaside track afterwards. It was a black night lit only by stars and a small white dog. I talked to Polly about the stars. About the planets that orbit many of them. About the alien civilisations that must exist out there, but which we will probably never meet.

- There's always astral travel, offered Jenny

Polly was frightened of the dark and we took the opportunity to explain that everything was the same as it was when we'd been down there earlier in the day - except there was no light. She told us she had once seen a 'skeleton with red' in the dark. Then we explained how the imagination can create monsters from the shadows of trees and branches... You forget what a young mind might or might not know. It's awe-inspiring that we are the ones gifted with the responsibility of educating her.

And then I think of the ecclesiastical vermin in the US who indoctrinate their young with creeds of fear, hate and mindless obedience ...

On that same walk, I thought I heard an owl. I went to say - that's a powerful owl - but I thought again and went to say - that's a boobook owl. What I actually came out with was - that's a powerbook owl. Jenny told me it was a seagull.

Over dinner, Di reminisced on the subject of deluxe cigarettes. She spoke lovingly of a brand named Passing Clouds which her husband had once smoked. They were oval, rather than cylindrical, and came in seductive pink packaging. She believed their provenance to be Greek. Her daughters spoke of gold-banded cocktail Sobranies with their delicate pastel shades of blue, green, pink and yellow. I remembered the filtered Gitanes I use to smoke, the swirling blue figure of the gypsy on the packet. Luxury cigarettes aren't what they were, at least where I live. Perhaps it's my age, my level of jadedness or my social status, but more likely it's the new outlook on cigarettes as ushers of death...

Allow me to be corrected by a brief look on the web. In 2000, Treasurer, 'the world's most expensive cigarettes' were released in Britain at something like AUD40 for a brushed soft-metal packet of twenty.