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Why do you listen to that?, they say. Why do you stick that in your ear Why did you put that on your feet Why don’t you choose your favourite? Go on. Pick the one you like. Sign here, and here. 

Right now is grey fucked-up smiling, earl-coloured tea in vacant-crowd mornings. But not wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee mornings. Brain and blood eating, been up all night mornings. Which-morning-is-it mornings. Mornings which reek of the night before, and that night several nights before, and that-Sunday-night-we-acted like-it-was-Thursday-night night. You wake up from staying up all night and smell the rubbish truck’s leftover dinners on you. You can taste wafts of other humans in your mouth – some cannabalistic feasting in a moment of apathetic desperation.

Well I saw something on your neck, she said. Well. 

What you saw were the undiscovered remains of a non-existent adolescence, riddled with nunnery-fast-fed tape worms scorching through its skinny teenage-sized intestines. You saw the unplanned decisions of an overactive imagination, paying $80 a week for a one-bed, one-windowed, one-life, one dream lost down the scummy public shower shared multi-complex drain. What you saw was no jug to boil the murkey tea-water wake-up call. An offer to ride on whimsical naivety, hopeful in-control-everywhere-except-for-here bare-backed youth. 

That is to say, younger. 

An offer which was, I’m sorry, declined. But, resurrected thricefold by quite accident and in fact following the first first accident by the declinee’s own doings. 

Then, once in a run-down, newly done-up-deconstructed, built-for-purpose, thirteen-hour-day, rub-your-manhood-on-the-perspex shipping container. 

The third time while striding past a bus stop. (I still feel bad that I even thought of looking straight ahead – mother most certainly did not bring me up that way – but then she didn’t raise me on $80 a week either.)

Right now: sitting majestically at the top of the stairs. Kingdom of plus/minus 100, a few extra casino stragglers, some fluffy carpet and several lipstick-stained paper coffee cups. One with teabag still inside. That is what your royal crown will be made up: used teabags.

And there will be worms in your teabags too. Running legless through the loose leaves in paper confinement. Like not-so-free-range hens piled on top of one another, scrambling to shove their worm beaks through the gaps in the teabag bag cage. The hot flood flushes them away. Cauterizes their little chicken-worm heads and fluffs their carpet of feathers. 

Until they are purged of all their insides, which flop compliantly into the swirling leaf-water mix. We're literally in hot water now. You're in hot water when your twelve-cups-a-day comfort isn't quite so comfortable anymore. 

What are you going to do, then? Will you find it at your local honey shop? Will you grow your own? Will you pick the scabs from your ten year old knees and feed it to your neighbours with freshly baked scones? Jeopardize public health for the sake of ethicality, organicality, not-for-profit-much-icality. Yes. I don't want to intrude on your sanity, but honestly. 

There's only so long you can meditate on these politics. Mr. Key isn't going to listen. Mister Key doesn't know what your favourite colour is any more than you do. So what're you going to do?

Look across the way and pretend you know me. Pretend you're sorting out your differences. I promise you: We'll be alike in approximately four categorizable ways. I promise: By the end of the night you won't know any of them.

Little green men will light your way home. Light your way to pissing in the gutter. Little green men with skirts begging to take you home, tripping over themselves to show you an inebriatingly good night. Oh, go on! Go on! Take up the offer. You won't find better on the next corner. Honestly.

Squeeze your legs tight. Scratch your own fingers until they're crying out in red-raw rasping throatness. Husky-sexy-ish. Husky is sexy. Red is sexy. Fingers are sexy Everyone knows that.