Darwin's Sway

Darwin's Sway

A short story by Jane Scanlon

New Years Eve celebrations were initiated in the most appropriate of
trash bag styles. Describing a clean cut beginning to the celebrations
and most definitely to the end is a job I dedicate to a future, more
responsible self. Instead, I will begin at where it all went
blurry.

Maintaining my habitual inability to prevent sexual confrontation under
intoxication, I woke up on New Years Day (or rather emerged from a
semi-paralytic state), in a hotel room in the middle of Sydney city,
initially woken by the feel of the anonymous stroking of my hair by an
all too familiar person - my bloody work experience boss. Well, let's
not get too melodramatic about this. Liam is young and handsome, though
potentially bisexual, which does lesson the attraction somewhat. For
how can some one commit to one person if they cannot even commit to one
sex? But what had driven this act? Once again I did not wonder at the
time.

The hotel room began to take shape through my alcohol sunken eyes and
it looked all too familiar. Early morning sunlight, clothes that seemed
to form a life of their own and wander independently into obscure
places and of course the boy, or more recently the man, by my side. My
initial reaction was to laugh. Laugh at the way my head span,
counter-clockwise to the direction of the rest of my body. Laugh at my
own indecency, relishing the self-gratification it gave me. Laugh at
the fact that I had to go home and then get to the airport to pick up
Nassa (from the 99 percentile) arriving from New Zealand in one hour's
time. Separating myself from this scene proved easier than anticipated.
Once again I went home in a cab, passing through the Harbour Tunnel to
the saner side of the city and of my life. Thus New Years Eve had
begun.

After picking up the car and talking drunken nothingness to my
beautiful, but perpetually bemused, mother, I drove to the airport.
There, I proceeded to eat Macca's (the chemical grease lining my abused
stomach, adding insult to injury) and wait for the onslaught that Nassa
rode in with on the plane. He arrived with a carton or cigarettes,
$2000 cash, a bottle of whiskey and a devious smile. I felt equally
threatened and apathetic as he discussed the source of his money and
the violence that sheathed it. After surviving a trip with Nassa,
drinking whiskey straight from the bottle like an AA escapee, and
chain-smoking like it was a cure for the plague, I dropped Nassa off at
a very suspicious looking apartment and headed back across the bridge
to start work.

So after various New Years formalities, like organising copious amounts
of drugs and other imperative goodies, we started our celebrations at
Brieana's house in the Rocks, the perfect location for all the
shenanigans that were bound to occur. I watched the 9:00pm fireworks
over the impressive Sydney Harbour Bridge with Nassa's over-bearing
arms surrounding my nervous but persuaded hips, snorting speed and
listening to Nassa's directness and others' obvious fear of him. Even
Nassa's appearance was intimidating enough. Half African American, half
Maori, Nassa stands an impressive six foot and is built like a tank.
But he definitely fails to upkeep the gentle giant stereotype. He
carries an expression that indicates he is constantly thinking
negative, if not criminal thoughts. When he looks at you, you can only
assume that these thoughts include you; the star of the show. But at
this stage of the night, with help of particular drugs, I was blinded
or at least indifferent to this reasonable belief about Nassa, letting
the night proceed as quickly as it always does when drugs are involved.
After the fireworks, the blur proceeded to a walk to Hunter Street
where our friendly, drugged up New Years party partners awaited us.
Pills, speed, alcohol? So which came first, the drunkenness or the
trashedness? Well they all legitimately combined to contribute to a
royal fucked up, so details are rendered meaningless.

It was a group of about eight, so the clubbing should have been
intimate and full of meaningless deep and meaningfuls. Nassa's
unpredictability, however, plagued my sanity, a cruel rumour
threatening my dignity. Even when dancing to the repetitive but
hypnotic Drum 'n' Bass that engulfed the club, I felt emotionally and
physically trapped, responsible for every indecent action he threatened
to, or actually did, carry out. He spoke to bouncers like he owned
them, handing them Chupa Chups as one would to a child or a fellow
trashed buddy. Even his dancing oozed ownership over everything and
everyone. I remember (very unclearly, it's true) walking out on to the
club's version of a court-yard where our friend Shari sat, being
harassed by some random, a normal, almost to be expected
scenario.

"Who is that guy talking to Shari?" Nassa enquired. At that
inconspicuous question Shari rolled her eyes at us, indicating that
some help was needed.

"Awe, I'm just hanging out with.... er... what's your name?" he
inarticulately asked Shari.

(Generally, the standard of intelligence at such parties is below the
average IQ recorded on the internet tests.)

Nassa started to shake his head. Slowly, menacingly. His disapproval
cut through the air like a knife. Needless to say, we didn't catch this
particular random in action at the club after that incident.

As the night progressed (and the drugs started to wear thin) I began to
realise the obscurity of my pseudo-relationship. It dawned on me that I
was enduring a kind of masochism, being the murderer of my own sanity.
But I also felt responsible for Nassa's presence, and was in far too
deep to come up for air. My usual saviour, the blessed Kate, the only
clarity amongst these blurred and shattered images, even she could not
console me at this time.

So where did I meet Nassa from the 99 percentile? That is a story in
itself. At 18 years old, I was impressionable and in turn easily
impressed. And you know what they say about first impressions. That's
when my unreasonable attraction to Nassa was born.

At this time, my friends and I visited the Regent Cafe in Kings Cross
religiously and there we met some very interesting characters bouncing
around. The Regent Cafe closed, re-opened and re-named perhaps five
times for reasons almost certainly to do with drug dealing, will always
be a point of reference for one of the best and most trashed times in
my life. As many people who have experienced drug taking as an art
form, my friends-namely, Jesse, Kate, Billie, Brieana and I became
associated with many other drug takers, drawn to them like the
proverbial moth to the flame.

There was Crazy Dave. I wish the name was used as an affectionate
reference, an exaggeration for comical purposes, but unfortunately,
Crazy Dave was actually crazy- a half crazy, half insane maniac. One of
those people your mother used to usher you past in a usually pleasant
neighbourhood, a cover boy for this month's edition of 'Junkie's Gone
Wrong'. Crazy Dave spoke so quickly that each sentence seemed like an
elongated word. Although an unusually trustworthy junkie, we thought
the better of remaining friends with him after he stripped naked one
early morning at Coogee beach and started 'bouncing' around, while
decent joggers (the ones who make you aware of how much of a trashbag
you really are) reminded themselves of how fortunate they were they
hadn't tried that line of speed at their 18th birthday party.

Crazy Dave is Australian (definitely not a pin-up boy for tourism
advertisements), but most trash bags we met were from New Zealand.
There was Hayden, my first New Zealand mate. I met him in The Regent
and, like most New Zealanders, he was a stereotypical hard arse, with a
drug taking capacity that far exceeded that of even the strongest
Aussie.

"Awesome fuckin' crowd tonight, eh?" I said all too enthusiastically,
sitting or rather slumping, semi-passed out on the chairs at the back
of the club.

"Jesus, best night I've had since I have been here, let me show you a
photo of my son" replied Hayden, as always the normal social time
allowed for intimacy significantly reduced by drugs.

With much difficulty I focused on the photo; a gorgeous blonde toddler
stared back at me, good stimuli for the state of mind I was in.

"His name is Karlton. He lives with his mother in Christchurch."

"Ah, you must miss him. He is gorgeous. So why are you here?" I asked,
genuinely curious.

"Awe, just hanging out, my bro' is here as well. We are living in
Bourke Street."

Later that night, or early next morning, which ever you prefer, after
much idle banter, I ended up in Bourke Street, meeting Hayden's brother
Dave, who is notorious in my selection of trash bag friends for reasons
that will soon become clear.

After that night in the Underground, I always had a drug dealer to call
a friend. Although a relationship with any drug dealer is more of an
essential obligation than a respectable friendship. A lot of time is
spent feigning good humour, but you never cease wondering if they're
aware of your ulterior motive. But who is to define a friendship? I was
certainly in no state to do so at the time, with drugs of unknown
origin circulating through my spent brain. In any case, sooner or
later, Dave became a part of the group family, forming a relationship
with Jesse (everyone's new best friend) where he subjected himself to
both her ancestral fortune and mental misfortunes.

Jesse was a friend from my very posh, all girls high school days. She
was the subject of much ridicule at school because of her dark hair and
slightly chubby physique. I was the prime source of this ridicule. Kids
may be cruel but teenagers can be murderous. The only memory I have of
how we became friends after years of my psychologically pestering her
is ironic. At superficial 16, I discovered she had mates who could
access pills, so we spent months together with similar aged people from
the Eastern Suburbs, taking pills and relishing the sense of
self-discovery and maturity it allowed us to feel.

One night, on our way home in a cab from the East- and totally off our
faces on pills, we vowed to never fight again, blabbering on about how
the world was too beautiful, our friendship too important, and other
pill-induced nonsense. I find it ironic that we had to use illegal,
mind altering drugs to feel some pure connection with each other.
Though perhaps such things are necessary, a cure for the social
coldness that has infected the souls of our western brothers and
sisters. Some of my relationships were always pure, but just made more
consistent with the aid of drugs. In any case, we honoured this vow and
continued to remain great friends- and even better friends when on
drugs.

Dave was Jesse's first real boyfriend. What can I say? Setting the bar
so low means you can only go up from there. Their relationship was like
a story never fully understood, a shadow of intimacy never ultimately
felt. Basically, a mystery in the making of a well rounded fantasy.
They were from such different upbringings and thus held different moral
beliefs and ideas about what could define their future happiness. Jesse
believed in money- Dave in more spiritual rewards. I doubt they could
ever have been happy in the long-term. Dave did have an infamous
influence on our lives, out of all the boys, becoming the main provider
of drugs, adequate in amount and diversity- that would finally send one
of our eccentric, genius friends to Manly's psychiatric hospital.

Within the midst of these circulated relationships, I met the infamous
Nassa, from the 99 percentile where only the strongest (as in Darwin's
theory) survive. The strongest could definitely be defined as the most
attractive and the most willing to subject them selves to Nassa's
personalised propaganda. Unfortunately (or however you choose to look
at it), I came to fit this genre as soon as he set his discerning eyes
upon my inexperienced body. This occurred at Dave's second place in
Rushcutters Bay. I had gone there with every intention of getting
drugged up for a night of chatting, dancing and general mayhem. As I
walked in the house with Kate and Jesse, I was greeted by a small group
of about six New Zealanders. Nassa's voice boomed and dominated the
small living slash-junkie room.

"What's your name? Is it Beautiful?"- the 'beau' sound never fully
pronounced, so it sounded like 'bootiful'.

"Close, but way off, my name is Jane", I replied rather hesitantly,
though I hid it well.
"And this is my girlfriend Jesse, and that's Kate."

Nassa didn't bother to conceal his apathy toward my mates and focussed
his overwhelming energy on my personal space, whilst informing no one
in particular how he had come to break the nose of one of the All
Blacks we were half watching on TV. This was the start of what I could
appropriately call an obsession on Nassa's behalf. To this day,
however, he swears that it was kindred spirits finding clarity amongst
the blur of reality (the blur totally self-inflicted of course). To
this day I am sure that it was his desire for absolute ownership over
everything that attracted him to me. I was ripe, beautiful and totally
open-minded. You can't blame a man for trying.

Before heading to the club, we were sidetracked by seemingly unlimited
flow of drugs. A group of about eight of us ended up in that notorious,
self-perpetuating conversation cycle, where every word disappears
without any evidence of its ever having existed. Everyone talks but no
one is listening. You feel as if you have the answers to all the
questions of universal importance, and these must be imparted to
everyone before you forget, or before the drugs wear off.

Later that night we underwent various clubbing shenanigans at The
Underground, where Nassa spent his time productively in my personal
space. As always we danced, drank and found hollow connections with
hollow, elf-like faces. Yet we felt that our drug induced relationships
were pure, that our group was real. I felt my relationship with Nassa
was something to admire, and after this one night I felt inexplicably
awe struck by him. My character was defined by his strength, the fall
back for every violent situation, my weapon for every confrontation. I
suppose, as a female, it is difficult to deny the instinctive
attraction for fundamentally strong and unchallengeable men. Like a
shadow of prehistoric female thought, ruling ominously over my
rationale.

Subsequently; Kate, Briena, Jesse and I started to spend a little bit
too much time with Dave, Nassa and a whole array of sketchy people.
Nassa and Dave were born dealers. Dave had a street wisdom accompanied
by an innate lack of awareness for other peoples well being, which is
the perfect disposition for a drug dealer. Nassa had a borderline
psychotic personality accompanied by a complete lack of morals,
including the spiritually important ones- also the perfect disposition
for a drug dealer.

On numerous occasions my girlfriends and I watched the boys inject
speed or smoke junk (in between all the oral consumption). Nassa always
managed to maintain control over every situation, including actively
disapproving of some of my girlfriends injecting any shite. Many of the
boys felt protective towards myself and my girlfriends, so that despite
the violence we were surrounded by, we never felt threatened. They
shielded us from any other sketchy people who dared to penetrate our
group, like fire with fire.

Some violence existed between the boys themselves, however. At one time
or another, every single one of my dealer friends had planned, whether
in actuality or merely in their thoughts, to rob or fuck over another
'friend'. At one time, Hayden (though he was enduring speed psychosis
at the time) was rumoured to have tried to have Nassa hit over a couple
of hundred pills. I don't even want to imagine how Nassa managed to
dodge that one. And I also think Brady is lucky to be standing, sane
and legitimate, today, although it probably explains why he no longer
lives in Sydney.

So how did our group finally dissipate to just yearly encounters with
each other- like the one Nassa and I had on New Years? Our friend who
took a trip to Manly's psychiatric ward in my car will help to
illustrate that one.

Apparently, it is common knowledge that prolonged drug use or just
excessive temporary drug use can lead to serious psychological impact.
But apparently such knowledge is always taken with a 'bet that it will
never happen to me'- until it actually does happen to someone of
significance in your life. This certain significant person was a close
friend from high school. From a wealthy, successful family in the
business of representing major gangsters in the court rooms, came our
most intelligent, shining friend. Lured by whatever fascinations you
can list in the eighteen year olds world of partying in Sydney, she
spent far too many days intoxicated by drugs. So scandalous was all of
this that not even the dealers (namely Dave) knew what part of the
periodic table they should be classified under. So lack of sleep, this
uneasy soup of chemicals in her blood and her uncanny intelligence made
for an explosive mix, in which shards lodged themselves way into her
future.

I was at work when I received the phone call. The disturbed voice of my
New Zealand friend Sam welcomed me at the other end.
"Jane, Lara has just turned up at my place. I think you should come and
get her... I... I.... don't really know what to do."

"Just keep her where she is," I replied, grabbing my things and
explaining hurriedly to my workmates that I had to go.

When I arrived at Sam's house I was quickly escorted to his bedroom
where Lara sat on the bed laughing hysterically. When she saw me she
feigned a serious expression, "Jane! Well, that must mean we are all
dead. I mean, didn't you know, this is the real world... Death is what
we experience in life. We have nothing to fear." But I certainly did.
Especially when I saw the cuts on her feet and ankles.

After much effort, Sam and I convinced her to get in my car. As I
drove, she spoke of conspiracies to kill her father, and tried to
convince me that the police where trying to kill her whole family. I
was listening attentively until she proceeded to tell me that she had
met Madonna in The Matrix and she was actually a right bitch. So after
deciding to drop her off at her parent's house, as she had been missing
for nearly a week, rather than take her to the hospital where I would
only have got into trouble for not taking her home first, I went home,
again to the saner part of my life. But insanity soon followed me
there, escorted by guilt and fear. All of my friends were concerned
about Lara, but none so much as her own family.

They say that money doesn't buy you happiness, but it certainly buys
you power and the right to be furious. Lara's family, understandably
distraught, with a daughter in hospital and with a great chance of her
never returning home, started a vendetta against the people they felt
were responsible for their own daughter's problems. They abused our
parents, they abused us and even had our phone lines tapped to discover
the source of Lara's drug use and subsequent illness. Of course all of
these actions were to no avail and they were left to focus their energy
on helping their daughter get better. Yet even today Lara struggles
with her mental health and I can not help but wonder at the fragility
of all of our minds. And how lucky many of us are to have risen from
the war against our own bodies and psychology with few battle scars,
excluding the occasional Saturday night relapse when we think we are
still fighting that very same war.

Lara did leave Manly's psychiatric ward. I don't think 'recovery' is an
applicable word, however. To this day she remains very ill, taking some
form of recommended drug or another. I use 'another', as I don't
consider any prescribed drug, like Lithium, that causes infertility to
be worthy of being called a legitimate solution. It's just one of many
drugs that causes an onset of more problems, and thus the use of more
drugs. I guess, like everything, there is more to it than meets the
eye. Lara's case of bipolar, formerly known as manic depression, is an
illness that cannot be dealt with simplistically. It is still in the
realm of 'possibly' and 'maybe'. It is not an easy thing to do, solve
the problems of the human mind - even with the accumulation of research
by human minds. We need a third, independent party to explain to us the
way things really are, but now we are getting to the realm of
'impossibility' - or simply 'load of bullocks'. Lara will never be the
same again, her fate manifested by backyard drug labs and drug dealers
with hollow hearts. A sad and unnecessary fate.

On an even darker note was my New Years Eve night with Nassa in a hotel
room in Rushcutters Bay. After spending the morning of New Years Day at
Shari's house in Chatswood, being scared shitless that Nassa would wake
from his slumber and ruin everyone's chilled out New Years Day, he and
I ventured to our hotel room. At this point I had a simple hope: that
the remaining drugs would be sufficient to make me happy or at least
make the time pass bearably while I endured that night.

It turned out to be as long as a night in prison. In the small,
confined space of our hotel room, we took the rest of our drugs and
talked of god only knows what. As a consequence of the amount of
serotonin and energy I had consumed over the previous two nights and
two days, my body finally protested by dispersing the drugs to some
useless part of my body. I was as straight as a snipers point of view,
but Nassa wasn't - in the worst possible way. He had consumed a litre
bottle of bourbon in the impressive time of two hours.

I thought I had been scared shitless before. He stumbled around the
room, while the conversation turned from the positively incoherent to
the violently purposeful. The demons of his past started to rise from
the depths of his passion - angry and determined. His face was
distorted and inhuman. He began to clench his fists, his veins
pulsating through his dark, tattooed skin like waves in the midst of a
huge relentless storm. He rambled about the horrific crimes he had
committed, and been forced to endure, because of his upbringing, and I
wished for the first time in my life that I was hearing disabled. I
tried in vain to comfort him, but realising that I was the only thing
in close vicinity for him to release his anger on, I chose to sit
quietly and hope he could overcome his state of near psychosis. But he
didn't seek help from me and he didn't take this anger out on me. There
was a clearer, more pertinent remedy - his father. Only a phone call to
New Zealand away.

According to Nassa (and his bottle of bourbon), his life had been equal
to a Jerry Springer and Maury show combined. It had the melodrama of
Jerry, with the sickening sincerity of Maury. His mother, a Maori
woman, had neglected him to the point of near infanticide. She had left
him in her car nearly every day, whilst she tried to satisfy her
unquenchable thirst for gambling. This was Nassa's earliest memory.
Following this abuse, his father forced him to sell drugs at a
criminally young age and would beat him senseless if he displayed any
sign of weakness. His father claimed that his African blood was the
strongest and purest of all mankind, and that he must never be
subservient to the white, weaker race. Nassa seemed to feel that his
best and easiest way to defy subservience was with violence, a violence
so indiscriminate it made any courage I might have felt, quiver.

Now he bled his spent heart to his father. Tears streamed and mucous
flowed unchecked down his face as he questioned his father's harmful
influence and his heartlessness. I can say with all sincerity that
there is nothing more hopeless, more unbearable than seeing a man of
such strength and physical power weep with the helplessness of a blind
child. It reached deep into the chasms of my spirit, crystallising into
sharp icicles with the coldness of an ice-age that lacked all humanity.
It forced me to re-evaluate the hurtful things that I have experienced
in my life as insignificant, if not embarrassingly simplistic, learning
curves. After hours of crying to his father, of attempting some kind of
reconciliation, or just trying to get straight answers to the questions
that had caused havoc in so many lives, Nassa gave up. He crawled like
a defeated soldier into my arms and passed out, the only state in which
I am sure he ever achieved any kind of peace. Thus New Years Day was
over.

It has been six years since Nassa and I first met and he still loves
me, still hangs onto the obsession of our destined partnership, though
I give him little fuel to keep this thought alive. I think he needs to
believe in us more than he actually does, and I am in no position to
deny him the comfort and security of this belief. He remains a living
tribute to Darwin's theory in the harsh conditions of Alaska, labouring
in the oil industry, using his physical power to make money. Perhaps in
such a cold isolated environment, the harshness of his own life will
become frozen in his past. Maybe the reality of the moment, encompassed
by such undeniable natural beauty, will be the warmth with which his
spirit survives.

For my friends and me, life has never been more inviting. My
friendships with some of the girls, namely Kate, are rich with honesty
and an innate understanding of each other. Our experiences in those
uncertain times, both good and bad, challenged our perception of each
other, ourselves and the world we took our first breath in. Life has
given us a strong sense of morality and more importantly, it has been
merciful. Rest assured we do not take this fortune for granted.

I often wonder, however, why we are instinctively so reckless and
carefree as children and teenagers. Of course Psych 101 tells us that
we must develop responsibility in order to look after our offspring and
be constructive members of our social group. I can't help but think
that we must be able to cringe at the decisions we have made, at the
stupidity of our desire for escapism and cheap contentment, if we are
ever going to develop. We must laugh at ourselves and each other with
all the love we can muster. If we are never going to know the answers
to life's deepest questions, then we might as well learn the makings of
our own hearts, or at least get trashed trying. And isn't that what New
Years is all about?