The Past. Wow.
I'm tired. I just wrote a really long email to a foundation that works with the children of drug-addicted parents who are either in active addiction or, more commonly, dead. I wrote to offer my services as a volunteer, but my own email has overwhelmed me and I haven't sent it yet. It's brought up the past and I've already gone there too often in recent days. I'm walking around a little bit sadder as a result.
Via Facebook, I've just reconnected with the one person I've wanted to get word to about Anne's death eight years ago. (Eight! What the fuck!!!) When I saw a comment in a Facebook group about being chucked out of the Journos' Club in Surry Hills for pissing in the men's toilets, I knew "Deb" had to be Debbie 'cos I was with her at the time - haha! - only I didn't get chucked out. I was doing the self-same thing but don't judge me 'cos if you'd seen the queue to the women's loo (and were drunk and - pretty sure - tripping too), you'd have done it too. Also, I seem to recall there were no women's toilets even on that level. WHAT? The male bastion of *journalists* (drawn-out and sing-song) didn't expect to have women drinking on that particular floor because...? I remember being outraged. True, I was always outraged, but there was truly always a good reason for it!
Anyway, I messaged Debbie. She and Anne had shared such ancient history up in Brisbo that it seemed right she should know. (Turns out she'd heard something on the grapevine down in Melbs and this confirmed it for her.) I'd first met her at about 17 in an airy Queenslander up on Highgate Hill. Debbie, Angela, Maryanne (and Anne). I remember most of that holiday well. By day, Anne and I would chow down at Pancakes and Aroma's, frequenting Brisbane's really cool bookshops and record shops and that cinema where we saw the first legal showing of Easy Rider since it was released twenty years earlier. True: it was banned for all those years. (Bloody Joh.) By night, we five busted our humps to make it to Church gigs all over SE Queensland, four or five nights in a row anyway, and I still remember the venues: The Roxy, The Patch (Patches?), the something... and somewhere else. Oh, and that pub in the city centre. What was that called?
I only have a vague recollection of Angela. She was a slightly sarcastic and kind of intimidating (haha!) goth with skull-buckle boots (hey, it was 20+ years ago; leave her alone!). Maryanne was "herbal". Is that a uniquely '80s Aussie word for that genre/type or what? She could be abrupt to shock and I remember finding it really off-putting the way she did it; she once said something rude about my mum ("didn't you wish she didn't ring?") next to the phone when she'd called me to it. Gauche. That was a few years later though when she became one of Anne's and my flatmates on Clevo Street a few years later. Debbie was a rock chick with big blonde hair who moved down to Sydney too before settling in Melbourne, and Anne was... well, she was like me, and my bestest friend in the whole wide world to boot. Thick as thieves we were.
We were also the only two kids like us that we'd ever been able to define. We'd already formed the philosophy of Zi or, in fact, I think that was the trip where all that became consolidated. There was nothing we could write down about it, so I've long been aware that ever since Anne died, I'm the only carrier of the spirit of Zi. We didn't write any of it down because that didn't gel with the spirit itself. Its ephemeral and polymorphous nature contravened the very concept of MANIFESTO! How Zi! Actually, we were going to, now that I think about it. It was going to be in zine form (of course) and was to be called Zi(Function). I still think I may call my first eventual zine Zi(Function). As far as Anne knew before she died, I was going to do just that and she liked it. Nothing to do with Zi itself; just a title.
It's strange to feel Anne receding into the dimmer and dimmer past as time gallops on, so during these past few days delving in backwards it's felt a bit as though a raincloud skyscape has followed my head from room to room and garden to house. Every now and then I remember I was sore at Anne in the last few weeks she was alive. I forget that more and more often because in the grand scheme of life that kind of shit matters not a whit, but it was certainly significant at the time, so I do try to recall it every now and then. Just more then than now. And it still doesn't matter. It just makes me feel bad. Uncharitable and too in it to have shown enough compassion. She clearly wasn't well, looking back. That was part of it anyway. It made her tired and gruff, impatient and self-focussed. And it doesn't mean anything at all as far as our friendship was concerned. I just got caught up at the time and thought it really did. But she told me once, all smiles and heart, about describing me to some guy at the Townie. "We're like that," she told him as she crossed her first two fingers and felt gladness in her tired heart that I was back from Wisconsin, she was back from Hong Kong, and our best-friendship superceded all other best friendships amassed around us. She used to call her other best friend her best friend too, but she said unequivocally that I was her even-more-best-friend and that meant something, even at 32 (as we were then). It really did. It meant something to her saying it, and it meant something to me receiving it. I would never have said this to her - except I think we did actually discuss this in more oblique terms - but there was a real Victorian love to our friendship. It was as deep as it gets and I never want to talk about it in this much detail except that I do. I miss her and she pisses me off very occasionally for "leaving" (tiny violins?) but she never meant to and she'd be gutted for me after she realised what it meant for herself if she knew.
I know I got a phonecall that night. There was no one there but I know it was Anne trying to reach me. I wish she'd called 000. I will always believe she rang me for help but couldn't speak and I didn't intuit a thing. We intuited everything that concerned each other but oh no not THAT... Is that a sign it wasn't even her, or is that semi-wishful thinking? Whenever I tried to tell anyone about that silent phonecall they dismissed it as a "wrong number" or "computer-call fucked up" but this was before the ubiquitous computer call... they were in their early days so I suppose they were even more erratic (but less annoying somehow) than they are now but it wasn't anything like those. It was the most mysterious phonecall of my life and before I ever had a chance to ask her later if that had been her, she was dead. WHY didn't I dial *10#? I think I'd been asleep and probably thought I would in the morning if still curious when awake. Another oddity - I was rarely in bed before 3am which was round about when I think the call came.
ANYWAY.
....and now BACK TO THE FUTURE: The more things change the more they stay the same for sure, except now - 24 years later - it feels really different as well. We've all lived lifetimes in between times, and Anne isn't here and I had to tell Deb about it via Facebook PM yesterday. It all resurfaced, the shock and the sorrow. To be telling someone anew... Wow, it sucked more than I would have imagined.
Anne and Deb had last seen each other at an AFL game we all went to at the MCG: North Richmond (or just Richmond) vs. Essendon. Yours truly was so stoned I remember it was almost like looking through tinted perspex. My conscious recollections such as they are, that is. (Lord was I stoned.) The oval was round, the players tall and lean, and team scarves flapped amidst the din. It was theatre but it was Greco-Roman.
So a couple of days ago I was here on this since-then-new/back-then-futuristic invention called 'The In-ter-net' some aeons and aeons later, incredulous that it was even eight years down the track from Anne's shock departure, informing Miss Deborah that our mutual friend was long dead of, essentially, a heart attack. And so out of the blue. You just don't imagine scenarios like that when you're 17.
I'm sort of going to change tack here a bit. It's too much and I don't want to leave on such a sad note. My thoughts are grasping and fleeting this afternoon, and I want to climb out from under this cloud of reminiscence. I feel defensive that I'm posting all these personal recollections but I strongly sense I need to get it down to get it out.
AND SO...
I've had a peek into other facets of my past recently thanks to Facebook, reconnecting with this web of interlocking memories that are held by gossamer strands in the recollection of other people I barely knew, let alone know now. I've sort of been happy enough to forget a lot of that because it's all tied up with drugs and the bow is, like, beer. (O, poetry!) But the names and faces Racebook's (haha, oops) brought out of the woodwork... The most prescient one right now is my old Ramones-cartoon-character-crush of yesteryear, this guy I was hooked on. The merest glimpse of him at a venue a band we both loved might've been playing at and my whole night was made. If he left early I was gutted. He was my eye candy and my most enduring of crushes, and it was all absolutely irreconcilable because I was always too shy to talk to him! What a joke! And I was convinced it was obvious that I was 'cos we had so many friends in common who I could and did speak to, though they charmed me so much less and I would try to keep him in my peripheral vision... and I think it's even possible he was too shy-di-shy (ooh-ah, eye-doo-eye) too. He could either see right through me or else he was completely unaware I gave a shit about him - ohhhh! ("How will I know?" indeed, Whitney Houston.)
I remember this one delicious day he and his girlfriend came into the shop I worked at and she didn't know me from Adam, and he comes up to the counter and goes, "g'day" in this private way (well, in my dreams it was anyway - nyah-ha!) and we never even used to say hi or nod to each other or anything, but this was different turf and I had a different hat on so I go "hi" and it's patently obvious - at least to me - that I don't give him the friendly spiel all the other customers got (part of my job) because there's no pretense with this coolest (and favourite) of customers that it wasn't a really weird bloody scenario. Well, definitely to me because it was, what with it being my place of employment and all. (He, himself, has perfectly conceivably forgotten about it ever happening, or - sniff! - me ever existing. No, sir - he might not remember me at all - wickedest tragedy, to be sure. But he knew I existed then, oh yes he did!) Anyway, so it was all unspoken, I kinda liked to think (enough with the disclaimers - GRRR, this is dependent on them, I know, but I just don't want old egg on face - you can understand that, Shirley.) Fireworks were exploding around our heads and no one else could see them, maybe not even him. It was either all my fantasy or he was electrified too, only he'd managed a "g'day" and I could barely look him in the face long enough to say "hi"...
And so, guess what! I saw his FB picture: he's still sweetly adorable. Of course he is. I have never (rarely) had bad 'taste'. He was always the ultimate to me. (I think I even showed Todd his photo, but I'm not really sure.) See, I couldn't show Anne. Anne knew how I felt about him. Oh man, did Anne know! She'd kinda dug him herself until my crush went exponential and she started liking this friend of his instead who had the same first name. Ultimately she became mates with him ("my" one) and was able to carry on a reasonable conversation with him, but that dude brought out the shy shy shy in me. By all accounts he was and is a really nice, easy-going guy. I already knew he had perfect taste in music because from about '89 to '94 we were at exactly the same gigs all over town. Well, heaps of the same anyway.
Via Facebook, I've just reconnected with the one person I've wanted to get word to about Anne's death eight years ago. (Eight! What the fuck!!!) When I saw a comment in a Facebook group about being chucked out of the Journos' Club in Surry Hills for pissing in the men's toilets, I knew "Deb" had to be Debbie 'cos I was with her at the time - haha! - only I didn't get chucked out. I was doing the self-same thing but don't judge me 'cos if you'd seen the queue to the women's loo (and were drunk and - pretty sure - tripping too), you'd have done it too. Also, I seem to recall there were no women's toilets even on that level. WHAT? The male bastion of *journalists* (drawn-out and sing-song) didn't expect to have women drinking on that particular floor because...? I remember being outraged. True, I was always outraged, but there was truly always a good reason for it!
Anyway, I messaged Debbie. She and Anne had shared such ancient history up in Brisbo that it seemed right she should know. (Turns out she'd heard something on the grapevine down in Melbs and this confirmed it for her.) I'd first met her at about 17 in an airy Queenslander up on Highgate Hill. Debbie, Angela, Maryanne (and Anne). I remember most of that holiday well. By day, Anne and I would chow down at Pancakes and Aroma's, frequenting Brisbane's really cool bookshops and record shops and that cinema where we saw the first legal showing of Easy Rider since it was released twenty years earlier. True: it was banned for all those years. (Bloody Joh.) By night, we five busted our humps to make it to Church gigs all over SE Queensland, four or five nights in a row anyway, and I still remember the venues: The Roxy, The Patch (Patches?), the something... and somewhere else. Oh, and that pub in the city centre. What was that called?
I only have a vague recollection of Angela. She was a slightly sarcastic and kind of intimidating (haha!) goth with skull-buckle boots (hey, it was 20+ years ago; leave her alone!). Maryanne was "herbal". Is that a uniquely '80s Aussie word for that genre/type or what? She could be abrupt to shock and I remember finding it really off-putting the way she did it; she once said something rude about my mum ("didn't you wish she didn't ring?") next to the phone when she'd called me to it. Gauche. That was a few years later though when she became one of Anne's and my flatmates on Clevo Street a few years later. Debbie was a rock chick with big blonde hair who moved down to Sydney too before settling in Melbourne, and Anne was... well, she was like me, and my bestest friend in the whole wide world to boot. Thick as thieves we were.
We were also the only two kids like us that we'd ever been able to define. We'd already formed the philosophy of Zi or, in fact, I think that was the trip where all that became consolidated. There was nothing we could write down about it, so I've long been aware that ever since Anne died, I'm the only carrier of the spirit of Zi. We didn't write any of it down because that didn't gel with the spirit itself. Its ephemeral and polymorphous nature contravened the very concept of MANIFESTO! How Zi! Actually, we were going to, now that I think about it. It was going to be in zine form (of course) and was to be called Zi(Function). I still think I may call my first eventual zine Zi(Function). As far as Anne knew before she died, I was going to do just that and she liked it. Nothing to do with Zi itself; just a title.
It's strange to feel Anne receding into the dimmer and dimmer past as time gallops on, so during these past few days delving in backwards it's felt a bit as though a raincloud skyscape has followed my head from room to room and garden to house. Every now and then I remember I was sore at Anne in the last few weeks she was alive. I forget that more and more often because in the grand scheme of life that kind of shit matters not a whit, but it was certainly significant at the time, so I do try to recall it every now and then. Just more then than now. And it still doesn't matter. It just makes me feel bad. Uncharitable and too in it to have shown enough compassion. She clearly wasn't well, looking back. That was part of it anyway. It made her tired and gruff, impatient and self-focussed. And it doesn't mean anything at all as far as our friendship was concerned. I just got caught up at the time and thought it really did. But she told me once, all smiles and heart, about describing me to some guy at the Townie. "We're like that," she told him as she crossed her first two fingers and felt gladness in her tired heart that I was back from Wisconsin, she was back from Hong Kong, and our best-friendship superceded all other best friendships amassed around us. She used to call her other best friend her best friend too, but she said unequivocally that I was her even-more-best-friend and that meant something, even at 32 (as we were then). It really did. It meant something to her saying it, and it meant something to me receiving it. I would never have said this to her - except I think we did actually discuss this in more oblique terms - but there was a real Victorian love to our friendship. It was as deep as it gets and I never want to talk about it in this much detail except that I do. I miss her and she pisses me off very occasionally for "leaving" (tiny violins?) but she never meant to and she'd be gutted for me after she realised what it meant for herself if she knew.
I know I got a phonecall that night. There was no one there but I know it was Anne trying to reach me. I wish she'd called 000. I will always believe she rang me for help but couldn't speak and I didn't intuit a thing. We intuited everything that concerned each other but oh no not THAT... Is that a sign it wasn't even her, or is that semi-wishful thinking? Whenever I tried to tell anyone about that silent phonecall they dismissed it as a "wrong number" or "computer-call fucked up" but this was before the ubiquitous computer call... they were in their early days so I suppose they were even more erratic (but less annoying somehow) than they are now but it wasn't anything like those. It was the most mysterious phonecall of my life and before I ever had a chance to ask her later if that had been her, she was dead. WHY didn't I dial *10#? I think I'd been asleep and probably thought I would in the morning if still curious when awake. Another oddity - I was rarely in bed before 3am which was round about when I think the call came.
ANYWAY.
....and now BACK TO THE FUTURE: The more things change the more they stay the same for sure, except now - 24 years later - it feels really different as well. We've all lived lifetimes in between times, and Anne isn't here and I had to tell Deb about it via Facebook PM yesterday. It all resurfaced, the shock and the sorrow. To be telling someone anew... Wow, it sucked more than I would have imagined.
Anne and Deb had last seen each other at an AFL game we all went to at the MCG: North Richmond (or just Richmond) vs. Essendon. Yours truly was so stoned I remember it was almost like looking through tinted perspex. My conscious recollections such as they are, that is. (Lord was I stoned.) The oval was round, the players tall and lean, and team scarves flapped amidst the din. It was theatre but it was Greco-Roman.
So a couple of days ago I was here on this since-then-new/back-then-futuristic invention called 'The In-ter-net' some aeons and aeons later, incredulous that it was even eight years down the track from Anne's shock departure, informing Miss Deborah that our mutual friend was long dead of, essentially, a heart attack. And so out of the blue. You just don't imagine scenarios like that when you're 17.
I'm sort of going to change tack here a bit. It's too much and I don't want to leave on such a sad note. My thoughts are grasping and fleeting this afternoon, and I want to climb out from under this cloud of reminiscence. I feel defensive that I'm posting all these personal recollections but I strongly sense I need to get it down to get it out.
AND SO...
I've had a peek into other facets of my past recently thanks to Facebook, reconnecting with this web of interlocking memories that are held by gossamer strands in the recollection of other people I barely knew, let alone know now. I've sort of been happy enough to forget a lot of that because it's all tied up with drugs and the bow is, like, beer. (O, poetry!) But the names and faces Racebook's (haha, oops) brought out of the woodwork... The most prescient one right now is my old Ramones-cartoon-character-crush of yesteryear, this guy I was hooked on. The merest glimpse of him at a venue a band we both loved might've been playing at and my whole night was made. If he left early I was gutted. He was my eye candy and my most enduring of crushes, and it was all absolutely irreconcilable because I was always too shy to talk to him! What a joke! And I was convinced it was obvious that I was 'cos we had so many friends in common who I could and did speak to, though they charmed me so much less and I would try to keep him in my peripheral vision... and I think it's even possible he was too shy-di-shy (ooh-ah, eye-doo-eye) too. He could either see right through me or else he was completely unaware I gave a shit about him - ohhhh! ("How will I know?" indeed, Whitney Houston.)
I remember this one delicious day he and his girlfriend came into the shop I worked at and she didn't know me from Adam, and he comes up to the counter and goes, "g'day" in this private way (well, in my dreams it was anyway - nyah-ha!) and we never even used to say hi or nod to each other or anything, but this was different turf and I had a different hat on so I go "hi" and it's patently obvious - at least to me - that I don't give him the friendly spiel all the other customers got (part of my job) because there's no pretense with this coolest (and favourite) of customers that it wasn't a really weird bloody scenario. Well, definitely to me because it was, what with it being my place of employment and all. (He, himself, has perfectly conceivably forgotten about it ever happening, or - sniff! - me ever existing. No, sir - he might not remember me at all - wickedest tragedy, to be sure. But he knew I existed then, oh yes he did!) Anyway, so it was all unspoken, I kinda liked to think (enough with the disclaimers - GRRR, this is dependent on them, I know, but I just don't want old egg on face - you can understand that, Shirley.) Fireworks were exploding around our heads and no one else could see them, maybe not even him. It was either all my fantasy or he was electrified too, only he'd managed a "g'day" and I could barely look him in the face long enough to say "hi"...
And so, guess what! I saw his FB picture: he's still sweetly adorable. Of course he is. I have never (rarely) had bad 'taste'. He was always the ultimate to me. (I think I even showed Todd his photo, but I'm not really sure.) See, I couldn't show Anne. Anne knew how I felt about him. Oh man, did Anne know! She'd kinda dug him herself until my crush went exponential and she started liking this friend of his instead who had the same first name. Ultimately she became mates with him ("my" one) and was able to carry on a reasonable conversation with him, but that dude brought out the shy shy shy in me. By all accounts he was and is a really nice, easy-going guy. I already knew he had perfect taste in music because from about '89 to '94 we were at exactly the same gigs all over town. Well, heaps of the same anyway.