A lot of people ask me, write to me, buttonhole me in coffee shops and shopping malls wanting to know who’s my favourite author? Who’s my favourite Australian writer? Who’s my favourite novelist? Well, to be honest, I don’t read many novels. I read mostly biographies or true-life stories such as Keith, Hey You in the Black T-Shirt, A Stone Alone, Bomber, Alphaville, etc. I liked Colleen McCullough’s novel Tim. It had me sitting on the beach in my banana chair crying my eyes out. I’m on a first name basis with Colleen and she autographed Tim for me as her ‘bucket of tears book’. She wasn’t wrong. Tim Winton is a very good writer and I enjoyed his novel The Riders, even if there’s a hole in the plot you could fly a squadron of 747 Jumbo jets through. But Tim got away with it and that’s the main thing. There was a terrific writer living in Australia named Paul Mann, who is now living in America. One of his books was called The Season of the Monsoon, set in India. It was a well-documented and fantastically descriptive book. But Paul’s only problem was he could never end a book. Monsoon was no exception. It fell in a heap in the end. If they’d have torn the last twenty pages out it would have been an absolute ripper. I’ve read a lot of Henry Lawson and Lennie Lower. Lennie was always good for a laugh. And when I was going to Randwick High School, I read a lot of Carter Brown, Larry Kent and Mickey Spillane — when you could find Mickey Spillane. And I enjoy most of Frederick Forsyth’s books. But all up, I don’t care so much for novels. Give me a good ballsy gritty book about the Mafia, bikie gangs, weird rock stars or crooked cops any day.
This, however, doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t have a favourite author. There’s one writer, I’ve got every book of his I can lay my hands on. I’d read his old shopping lists if I could get hold of them. I even read his poetry. And I hate fuckin poetry, especially free verse. Except back in the day when young women would come up to me and say, ‘Are you Robert Barrett the author?’ My standard reply was always, ‘I’m not sure. Do I owe you any money?’ Then they’d gush and tell me how they wrote poetry. And I would say, ‘Really? Gee, that’s good. I love poetry. Why don’t you call round and show me some of your works?’ And I have to admit, after getting corns on my ears from listening to their absolute self-pity-ridden dribble while I loosened them up with a few glasses of cheap plonk, a lot of times this dirty old bastard would have his filthy way with these poor gullible women poets. But the bloke, the author I’m talking about, is the late Charles Bukowski. I love his filthy, base, semi-obscene, if-you-don’t-like-it-stick-in-your-arse style of writing. One book of his, Women, I’ve read ten times. And I’ll read it another ten times. It’s a complete crack-up.
Actually, apart from Charles writing in the first person and me mainly writing in the third, the late ‘Hank’ and myself have a lot in common. We both had bad-tempered fathers, we’ve both had more than our share of street fights, we both served short stints in gaol for misdemeanours. We’ve both been flat broke. We’ve both worked rotten jobs for pricks of bosses, alongside blokes we couldn’t stand. I’ve had the bank wanting to foreclose on my house while the sheriff was at the door wanting to take my car and furniture. I’ve never slept on park benches. But I’ve slept in sandhills, crappy boarding houses and my car. I’ve never been a cigarette-smoking pisspot or bonked fat ugly hookers and been involved with women as crazy as the ones Bukowski did when he got famous in California. But I don’t mind a drink and I porked plenty of fat ugly girls when I was a young waxhead leaking testosterone all over Bondi Beach. And when I got established as a writer, I got involved with some of the nuttiest, weirdest women in Australia. If you want to know what they were like, trawl through some of my books such as Goodoo Goodoo or The Wind and the Monkey. If you find a crazed woman in them, you can bet she’s based on one of my ex-girlfriends.
So apart from similarities in our lifestyles, what is it I like about Charles Bukowski? Put simply, his honesty. He’s an honest writer. He’s not out to impress you or the critics. He’s not writing to garner literary accolades or grants. He just writes about what he sees around him and spices it up a little when he adapts it into a novel using his alter ego ‘Hank Chianski’. And if you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Tell me, what author, particularly in Australia, could write about masturbating in bed, getting up, having a crap, cleaning the bowl because there’s a woman he’s trying to impress calling around later, going to the letter box, boiling an egg for breakfast then, after a glass or two of cheap wine or a few cans of beer, going to the races before coming home, drinking more cheap piss and writing about it all night? You wouldn’t be able to give the books away. But Charles Bukowski could. And make it thought-provoking and entertaining as well as funny. I could go on all day about my hero Charles Bukowski. But if you want the full guts on Hank Chianski, get a DVD called Bukowski: Born into This. It tells it warts and all and extracts a tear or two into the bargain.
Anyway, after a life of cheap booze, cigarettes, flop houses, fat whores and no food, by the time he got rich and famous and found an attractive wife who loved him, Bukowski finished up with tuberculosis and leukaemia. Towards the end he wrote one particular book called The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship. In it, he just writes about his life in general, other odd things and observations of people around him. It’s great writing. Brilliant in its enigmatic simplicity, honesty and eye for detail. So, seeing as the last three years of my life have been an absolute shit fight, and in honour of the late, great Charles (Hank) Bukowski, I thought I’d write a story in his style. Isn’t imitation the greatest form of flattery? Be warned, though. It’s filthy, grungey and right in your face. But that’s the way I had to go if I was to nail my old mate Hank. Strangely enough though, during the third year of my shit fight, I’m certain I also nailed an old treatment for cancer that actually seems to work. So, grab a bottle of cheap plonk, some even cheaper cigars and a fat ugly hooker, and let’s go bowling for Bukowski.
The shit hit the fan for me in late 2008. I knew it would. It had to. Because everything at the time was going so good. I’d just recovered from bladder surgery and after three months of pissing rusty thumb tacks and oyster shells, I was now pissing like an urchin and loving it. I’d just finished another book, the extremely violent High Noon in Nimbin. So I had a nice fat advance royalties cheque sitting in the bank. The government booted my poor old mother, who absolutely hated me, off the pension, so I got her into a nice nursing home up here, took her miserable, pissy, smelly old moth-eaten shit of a cat that hated me as much as my mother, under my wing. Then, in the middle of a real estate slump, put an ad for her run-down, cat-shit-riddled town house at Maroubra in the paper and sold it in two weeks for a motza and no real estate agent fees. I used part of the money to pay off a house I bought at Shoal Bay when I spat the dummy and decided to mortgage my house at Terrigal and move up there, before I changed my stupid bloody mind.
Then to top it all off, I changed accountants and got all my superannuation back and put it in the bank, two weeks before the financial crisis. Friends of mine lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I lost bugger all. So there I was, all cashed up, footloose and fancy free, out of debt and summer was coming on. Plus, instead of having to drive all the way to Sydney to get abused by the old girl, I only had to drive over to Kincumber, ten minutes away. Life was great. The only problem was the old moggy shitting, pissing and spewing all over the house. So I decided to kill the cat by sticking its head in a bucket of water.
But I couldn’t do it just like that. What sort of a barbarian do you take me for? I had to make plans. Plus, if the old girl found out her loving moggie was missing, she’d change the will. So one dark and stormy night, I crushed up two Rohypnols, four Valium and four Ativan and slipped them in puss’s bowl. This knocked the old cat for a loop, even if it didn’t quite knock it out. So I picked it up and took photos of it on my office chair, on my bed, on my recliner, lying on the lounge, etc. All the time it just lay there stoned off its head looking up at me with these big, soft googoo eyes. In the end they got to me and I couldn’t do it. So the cat got a last minute reprieve. I took the photos over to Mum and she couldn’t believe how relaxed the cat looked and how it had settled in with me. That’s just the way I am with animals, I told her. Funnily enough, after her giant trip, the old cat and myself became friends. I’d just slip her half a Valium now and again and the old flea bag thought I was the best bloke in the world. Life was great.
Then one fine morning, I was sitting on the brascoe, reading the paper amongst all the stink like any proud Aussie bloke. When I’d had enough and went to wipe my hairy fat blurter, I noticed blood where there shouldn’t have been. I didn’t like the look of it. But apart from a few pains in the gut now and again, which must have contributed to all the violence in High Noon in Nimbin, I was feeling pretty good for a grumpy old man. Nevertheless, I went and saw my local GP, who referred me to a specialist, who lined me up for a colonoscopy at Woy Woy Private Hospital.
In I went, where I found I knew the anaesthetist, who I’ll call Todd, who used to live next door to me. Todd was a real good bloke, and everybody who knew him said the same thing. Nobody ever said a bad word about him. Which sort of gave me the shits in a way. I was hoping just one person would say, Jesus, that Todd’s an arsehole, I wish he’d fall down a manhole. But no such luck. So I’m yakking away with Todd while they’re prepping me and I have to admit, I like the buzz when they put you under. I always talk right up until the hammer comes down and in what seems like a split second later you wake up in another room. It’s like time travel. So under I go, I wake up and Todd’s wheeling me into the recovery room and I started joking with him again.
‘How was it, Todd?’ I asked. ‘Just a few polyps?’
‘No,’ he replied, ‘it’s not. You’ve got cancer.’ Then good bloke Todd just walked off and left me.
For all my tough guy writing and my sarcastic smartarse attitude, I’m a bit of an old sheila at heart. And to find out you’ve got cancer then just be dumped there like that, hit me in the face like a shovel. My happy, cashed-up world had just turned into a steaming pile of shit. All I could do was stare up at the ceiling knowing I was going to die. Finally the doctor and the nurse came in with long faces and the first thing I said was, ‘How long have I got to go?’ However, the doctor assured me it wasn’t as bad as all that. They’d found it early and they could get it all out. When did I want to have an operation? I was still in a state of panic and said, ‘How about right now? This afternoon. Tomorrow fuckin morning. Let’s go. I’ve got fuckin cancer.’
The specialist lined me up with an oncologist at North Sydney Private Hospital, so I drove down to Sydney and met the surgeon, who lined me up for another colonoscopy. I paid a woman I knew to drive me down for that and afterwards I was assured once more that the cancer was in its early stages and he’d get it all out. I’d be in hospital a week, I wouldn’t need any chemotherapy and he’d perform the operation in a week’s time. I went home a reasonably happier man.
I knew I was going to be pretty stuffed when I left hospital so I had to organise for someone to give me a hand when I got home and someone to feed and keep the drugs up to my latest best friend the old cat while I was away. A married couple who lived up the street said they’d feed the moggie and I arranged for the same woman who drove me to Sydney to help me out around the house while I recovered. I’d known this woman, I’ll call her Agatha, for a fair while and even took her out a couple times after her husband traded her in on a newer model. She was the most indecisive woman I’d ever met and used to rabbit on about ‘shit-for-brains’ — her ex — a bit too much. But she was still fairly attractive for her age and at least she was company, and I like to take a KFC (Kind Female Companion) out for a feed now and again. She also liked to whinge about how she never had any money. So I imagined Agatha would appreciate a nice easy earn and it might add a little joy to her life.
Agatha drove me down to the hospital on Friday and dropped me off. I said I’d be in touch, I’d see her next Friday and she could use my ute while I was in hospital. Agatha split and I admitted myself into the cancer ward with the rest of the dead people walking. What can I say? The hospital was nice, my room was nice, the nurses and staff were extremely nice; even the food was nice. The only trouble was, I wasn’t allowed to eat anything. I had a lousy shit of a night with no sleep and waited for the big day.
After a splendid breakfast of a glass of water and a brisk walk round my room, they loaded me onto a gurney and wheeled me down to the operating theatre. As usual I kept rabbiting away non-stop, yakety-yak, blah, blah, blah, right up to the off. A nanosecond later, I woke up in a big room with a drip in my arm, a stomach full of tiny metal clips, a catheter jammed up my old boy, and instead of an arsehole, I had a stoma — something like a strawberry sticking out of my stomach covered by a plastic bag — and I was in a shitload of fuckin pain. It didn’t take me long to find the morphine button and that’s where my trigger finger stayed till they wheeled me back to my room.
If I thought the previous night was bad, compared to this it was a walk in the park. Instead of the nurses coming into pester you every hour, they came in about every twenty minutes. I soon figured out how to get back at them. No matter how much they prodded me jabbed me or tortured me, I used to thank them. Thank you. Thank you, nurse. After a while they figured out I was either a gibbering idiot or a nice old bloke. They all fell for the latter. I also figured out hospital beds and the gowns they make you wear were designed by the Nazi SS to torture any unfortunate Jewish people that finished up in the death camps. I defy anybody to tell me they’ve slept okay in hospital and they like the gowns. And that’s pretty much how I spent my time. Scarcely able to move, except to press my morphine button or hold my stomach, and praying I didn’t cough, laugh or sneeze. Mother rang three times to ask me how the cat was. A couple of events however helped to break the monotony.
I got a mag on with a good-natured, young male nurse who said he was thinking of writing a book about working in a hospital. I said that’s what I did for a living, gave him an autographed book and said if I could help him in any way, give me a yell. Ten minutes later I had a new, soft mattress on my bed and thirty minutes later he brought me in a recliner so I could relax in front of the window and enjoy the nonexistent view. But I could see the clouds and the sky and that was enough for me. The other event was my catheter. They replaced it four times, one doctor from parts unknown even managed to stick one in the wrong way around. But no matter what they did, I couldn’t piss. Whether the surgeon had gutted me with an old Bowie knife or something, I don’t know. But there was no way I could have a snakes without a catheter. So they arranged for another surgeon to give me a TURPS. I don’t really know what that is. But it’s supposed to open up your bladder or something. You should have seen the doctor who arrived to do the operation. He was dressed like an unmade bed, wore his hair in a smother and looked like the last time he’d done any surgery was during the Crimean War with no anaesthetic and Florence Nightingale holding the lamp. However, the dear old doctor said he could fix my piddling problem. But I’d be in hospital another week. Great. They starved me again that night, and late the next morning wheeled me down for my TURPS.
As usual I kept rabbiting away till the off and when I woke up this time I had a superpubic catheter jammed into the left side of my stomach like a meat skewer. Catheters have a small inflated balloon on the end to give your bladder the impression you want to have a piss. And that’s how you spend your days and nights, feeling like you’re busting for a leak all the time. In the meantime a stoma nurse came in and explained my stoma to me and showed me how to change it by myself. They’re great things, stomas. They go non-stop, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, pumping out gunk that looks and smells like a mixture of wino’s vomit and pureed flying fox shit. One night I found out something else about stomas. They fill up while you’re asleep, then you roll on them and they burst. This happened to me one night. I had to call the nurses and I’ve never felt so embarrassed all my life as I lay on my bed covered in foul-smelling gunk while they cleaned me and everything else up. Poor bloody nurses. Don’t ever try and tell me they don’t earn their money. But the cancer surgeon said I’d only have to wear the bag for three months then he’d join me back up. I rang Agatha and told her I wouldn’t be out till the following Friday. Agatha ummed and ahhhed over whether she could pick me up on Friday. She had to go shopping. Maybe Saturday? Ring her back through the week. Terrific, Agatha. Where do I sleep on Friday night when they boot me out? In the fuckin lobby?
Crook as it was, it could have been worse. By now my stomach wasn’t hurting as much and the physiotherapists and some good-looking young nurses took me for walks along the corridors. Plus I had a book and a small radio. I also had a portable DVD player. I’m digressing here. But earlier when I said I didn’t read many novels, I also don’t buy many movies. I prefer to watch documentaries like Louis Theroux, Nostradamus, Enemies of Reason, Alien Gods, etc. Though I did order one movie, which cost me almost thirty dollars: Danielle Steele’s Now and Forever, starring Cheryl Ladd and Robert Coleby. Only because Michael Long and I are in it playing two detectives. It was shot back in the eighties during the 10BA scheme, when if you put money into an Aussie film, you got a huge tax break. Which was a good idea until all the smarties in the Australian film game rorted it to death. Lang Hancock was backing this movie and no expense was spared. I was on $500 a day and Longie was on $750 because he had a speaking part, a lot of money back then. But apart from the money, for weeks on end they brought us both in only to never use us. So me and Longie used to sit in the back of my Kombi-Wagon smoking hash joints and listening to Led Zeppelin. The only time we’d surface was when they wrapped for lunch and we’d stumble out of my Kombi with a roaring case of the munchies and stuff ourselves with scampi, veal medallions, grilled barramundi or whatever. It was living the dream.
There’s also a blooper in that movie that is pure gold. Like a couple of good boofheaded wallopers, me and Longie had to go round to Cheryl Ladd’s house while her husband was remanded in custody and go through her laundry basket to find some semen specimens in her husband’s Reg Grundies. We were ratting through her knickers and her husband’s Y-fronts like the Gestapo when Longie said, ‘Ah ha! What’s this?’ and pulled out a pair of Reggies. As he did, a bra strap got caught in his watchband and phwoing! It hit poor Cheryl Ladd in the eye. Cheryl’s only small, but she let out all the Goddamns and sonofabitches and other profanities like a grizzled gunslinger in a John Wayne movie. Longie and the director both shit themselves and all the crew gathered around Cheryl like she was the queen bee. Stupid me. I just laughed and wished I had my camera. It was a classic. Poor Longie’s gone now. He loved a cigarette and the rotten Bengal Lancer got him, too. But gee, he was a lovely bloke and a pretty good actor, too. Ahh! Who said nostalgia ain’t what is used to be.
Time dragged on, they took the staples out, I rang Agatha, who agreed to put herself out and come down and get me. Have a coffee waiting for her when she got here, it was a long drive. Friday finally came round and they wheeled me down to the lobby to wait for Agatha. Somehow I managed to stagger over to the shop and get her a coffee around the same time she arrived. The porter put my bags in the back of the ute and I gave Agatha her coffee. She whinged that it wasn’t quite hot enough then whinged non-stop about her life in general all the way home. Stopping once when she got lost on Peat Island, where I had to stop and empty my bag, and again when she almost got us T-boned about two kilometres from Terrigal. I swear the other car missed us by less than a metre. We got to my place, Agatha dumped my bags in the lounge then split. She had things to do and she’d see me tomorrow. Thanks, Agatha. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I felt absolutely rooted, I looked like death warmed up and when I got on the scales I’d lost 12 kilograms. But boy, was it good to be home. Even the old cat was glad to see me. I had a cup of tea, joined the cat in a Valium then lay back on my recliner. And that’s pretty much where I stayed till Agatha came grumping through the door the next day.
I didn’t need a lot of nursing, and I didn’t want much food. The one thing I did want Agatha to do, apart from knock up whingeing and complaining all the time, was take me down for a coffee and a read of the paper so I could get out of the house for a while. Agatha said that would be all right, mainly because she knew I’d shout her a coffee, too. One day she came round to give me an airing and immediately started barking at me not to take too long and to hurry up because she had go somewhere. I gulped my coffee down and on the way home she sped over every bump in the road. It hurt that much I had to grab my wrecked stomach and hold on for grim death. I looked across at Agatha and she was laughing.
After Agatha left I figured out what her problem was. She was losing her looks, she was menopausal, she was filthy on blokes because of her husband and she was plain crooked on the world in general. Especially anybody who had anything. And I made a good whipping boy. It was getting near the end of December and I rang her one day to ask if she’d come over and bag up some T-shirts and take them to the post office. It was urgent, some readers needed them by Christmas. There weren’t that many and it wouldn’t take her an hour. No, she didn’t have time. A friend was coming over to mow her lawns. I said I’d give her a hundred dollars. Remember, this is the woman who’s always complaining she’s got no money. No. She still couldn’t come over. The lawns were more important. Maybe next week. So with a bag on one side, a catheter on the other and just out of hospital after two horrible operations, I did it myself. It took me fifty minutes. That’s the good news. The bad news was, I was still rooted and hadn’t driven my car for weeks. On the way down to the post office, I side-swiped a guard rail and when I parked illegally outside the resort across the road from the post office I backed into a feature wall when I turned round to leave. I stopped at a little coffee shop just round the corner and I was enjoying a flat white with the paper, when a woman came up and asked me if I owned the blue utility across the road. The police were going over it and a woman from the resort was taking photos. I walked over to see what was going on. Christ! I didn’t know I’d hit the wall. And even if I did, so fuckin what? I’m a grumpy old man and I’ve got a senior citizen’s card. I can drive any fuckin way I want. Fuck the cops. But a concerned citizen grassed me and the cops wanted to charge me with leaving the scene of an accident. Somehow, after showing the wallopers my stoma, my piss bag and scars and telling them I’d just got out of hospital, they let me off. Which would have to be a first for up here, because the cops on the Central Coast would arrest a dwarf for growing up. The woman from the resort said they’d send me the bill. I apologised to everyone, then bid them all adieu and returned to my paper and coffee, back to my grumpy old self.
But as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. Who should come traipsing into the coffee shop for a takeaway but my little Kiwi friend Lisa. Lisa is a brunette and a pocket dynamo who works in a nursing home and is always happy. She’s also got a monster bikie boyfriend I’ll call Otis. She asked me how I was and I told her. She said if I needed any help, give her a call. I said you’re on, baby. I finished my coffee, then went home and rang Agatha. I told her I was okay and I wouldn’t be needing her services any more. She could go back and hang out round the cauldron with the other witches from Macbeth. After I hung up, I totted up how much money I’d given Agatha. It worked out I’d been paying her $35 an hour. Not bad money to do nothing but gripe and tear the wings off an old fly.
After that my life improved noticeably. Lisa didn’t nag or shout at me. She didn’t whinge and surreptitiously try to torture me. Plus after working in a nursing home, she was used to smelly, pissy old toads like me. The only real downside was, because of the catheter and leg bag I couldn’t wear shorts. So I had to go to the beach and sit under the pine trees in a pair of cotton trackies and stare at the lovely blue Terrigal water and think how much I’d like to go snorkel sucking. The best I could manage was a dip up to my knees and to splash a bit of water on my face. The only thing missing was a hanky with knots tied in the corners on my head and a pair of black socks and sandals, and I’d have been a swap for an unwashed Pommy on holidays at Blackpool Pier. But it was all good. I could drive my car, I was out in the fresh air and after Agatha, Lisa was an angel.
So I sat out the summer under the trees at Terrigal reading and drinking coffee. I even lined up a builder to remodel my bathroom. One day, for some strange reason, I felt really crook. No strength, headaches. I had to go and see the stoma nurse at Gosford hospital and I remember having trouble parking my car and I had to walk a fair way. I could hardly put one foot in front of the other and when I saw the stoma nurse she said I looked terrible and arranged for me to have a urine test at Terrigal medical centre. I had that and my piss looked like rancid custard. I went home to lie down and my doctor rang me to say I was getting blood poisoning from the catheter and to book myself straight into Gosford hospital. I said I can’t, I’ve got builders coming tomorrow and if I’m not here they’ll wreck the place and leave shit everywhere. He said fuck the builders, pack your bag. I’ll be round to get you in an hour. He took me to the hospital, greased all the wheels and booked me in for five days on an antibiotic drip. How many doctors would do that? He left and while I was getting tested, I got this violent case of the hiccups. You could hear them half a kilometre away and they weren’t going to stop. So they gave me a shot of some drug they give epileptics when they’re having fits. It stopped the hiccups but it made me hallucinate. When the nurses were wheeling me down to my ward, they were carrying torches and I thought I’d died and they were monks wheeling me down through the catacombs. It was horrible. They got me into bed and I flaked out.
The next morning the screen drew back, I woke up and there was this gigantic shaven head looking down at me.
I screamed out, ‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘I’m Henry. I’m a nurse.’
‘Jesus! What the fuck’s wrong with your head?’
I settled down and things kind of got back to normal. It turned out Henry read my books. I’d tossed a couple in my bag before I left and gave him one which I autographed, To Henry with the big head. He was stoked.
They kept me in hospital for five days on the drip. Five days in a ward next to a noisy old bag who talked at the top of her voice non-stop into a mobile phone all day and snored all night. Luckily I foresaw this and brought some ear plugs with me. Finally they booted me out and Lisa came and brought me home. I was right about the builders. They did wreck the place and leave shit everywhere. But eventually they came back and cleaned things up. I went back to sitting under the trees down the beach.
Before long it was time to lose the stoma. So I booked myself back in to North Sydney Private for three days. Lisa drove me down and the surgeon joined me up. After crapping in a bag for three months, I don’t quite know how to describe my first fair dinkum shit. It was divine. It was exquisite. Shakespeare could have written a sonnet about it. This stinking gigantic turd just slid through me like it was on roller skates. I was ecstatic. I left the hospital a happy man. Next thing, it was time to get the catheter taken out. I went down myself and saw the kindly old doctor from the Crimean War. He did a little test then removed the catheter. I honestly tap danced out of his surgery and whistled all the way home.
In fact I was in such a good mood, I noticed the local Holden dealers were having a sale when I got to Gosford. So I traded the old blue streak in on a brand new Holden utility. I’ve never had a new car in my life and I figured if there’s still a chance I’m on the way out, I may as well go out in style. The new car was the grouse, even if you needed to be a bloody cosmonaut to drive it. Shit! Don’t even mention satellite fuckin navigation to me, I’ll stick with my faithful Gregory’s. But the stereo, the seats and the steering were sensational.
Life was now almost getting back to normal. I still had to build my strength back up and I needed to exercise, and it still hurt a bit when I went for a piss, but at least I could have a swim and get around all right. However, the big bloke upstairs had another surprise for me. Somehow or other I managed to get a pinched sciatic nerve in my back. I’d heard of these, but never had one. And I sure don’t want another. It’s like having a massive toothache in your back that never stops throbbing. I tried hot water bottles, stretching, painkillers, massages, acupuncture. I even went to these useless chiropractors who completely ripped me off. Ten minutes of actual hands-on treatment that did nothing — $110. The pain got that bad I drove down to Terrigal Medical Centre and got painkilling injections. Finally I went down and saw my old doctor and dear old friend in Sydney who used to give me cortisone injections when I buggered up my shoulder in the meatworks. He gave me a shot in the back which eased things immensely and lined me up for a CT scan up my way to find out exactly where the pain was coming from and to give me a shot of steroids. They hit the spot and I was over it. Thank God.
So once again I’m starting to feel all right and fairly confident I’d got on top of the cancer. Plus I’d gotten over a dose of blood poisoning, I had a new car and my back was good. I was walking the walk and talking the talk and even thinking of starting another book. I had a good idea for a story rattling around in my big boofhead. I was mulling it over and getting ready to fire up the old computer, when I suddenly started going to the toilet ten, fifteen times a day, dropping these tiny little turds with each crap hurting more than the one before. Eventually they turned into absolute agony and at night it was like I was shitting battery acid. It hurt that much it brought me to tears and I prayed for the pain to go away. I went and saw my GP and he lined me up for another colonoscopy at Gosford Private Hospital. I can just recollect Lisa driving me into the hospital and a nurse giving me an enema … and that’s it.
The next thing I can remember is seeing myself floating in a lake about three metres under water. I could see shafts of sunlight shining down into the water and the water was brown and mixed with algae. I was lying on my back dressed in white with my left arm half up in the air and I was looking at myself from my right hand side. It was all very peaceful and serene and there was nothing at all to be worried about or scared of. The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes to find myself in a strange bed in a big strange room full of screens and monitors. I was wearing a hospital gown, I was covered in drips and monitors and this nurse I knew, Toni, who I’d done a few favours for, was with some other nurses calling out to me, ‘Bob. Bob. Do you know where you are?’ I just looked at her, looked around and shook my head. ‘You’re in the intensive care ward at Gosford hospital,’ said Toni. ‘You’ve been in an induced coma for five days. Your bowel was perforated and you had extreme septicaemia. You’re lucky to be alive.’
I feebly felt around under my gown and my stomach was again full of metal clips, I had another catheter jammed up my wozza and I was wearing another bag. Only this time, the stoma was as big as a Kransky sausage. I couldn’t fuckin believe it.
Apparently, Lisa took me home and left me on my bed. Trudi, my friend’s wife from up the road, called in a couple of days later and found me on the bed almost delirious with pain. She called the hospital. The paramedics came round and filled me full of morphine then raced me into intensive care where the nurses put me in an induced coma. A doctor operated on me and found that as well as septicaemia, the cancer had come back, which was why I’d been crapping all the time and in so much pain. He cut another big chunk out of my bowel and put me on dialysis to get all the shit out of my blood. But my body just kept shutting down and I was going south in a hurry. Finally, the doctor said, ‘That’s it. I can’t do any more. He’s dying.’ Which means when I saw myself floating in the lake I was having an NDE, a Near Death Experience. However, Toni the nurse said, ‘No way. He’s not dying. He’s my friend.’ And you know what this beautiful bloody woman did? She pulled double shifts to keep the drugs up to me and saved my bloody life. Toni might not know it, but she’s in my will — big time.
After I came to, I just lay in the intensive care ward like a bag of shit, either dozing off or hallucinating from all the drugs they’d pumped through me to keep me alive. Everything I looked at changed shape into a human form or a face. I imagined all the nurses were talking Klingon and at night I thought I was in a cabin on a boat, the Sea Shepherd, while they were out chasing the Japanese whalers. I could hear Bob Hawke and Peter Garrett making speeches, I could hear the whales calling out to each other, I could hear children crying and waves breaking against the boat while the rain pelted down on the roof and the boat rocked from side to side. It was a fuckin nightmare. I woke up one morning and standing on the right-hand side of my bed was a big white rabbit wearing a straw boater and a red-and-white striped vest. Standing on the left side of my bed was a big white mouse wearing a white laboratory coat. After a while, I looked up at them and asked them what they wanted. I asked them a few times. Finally they turned to each other and walked off. But as they walked off they shrank till they disappeared into a little hole at the bottom of a wall. I was Through the Looking Glass. It was like Alice in Wonderland. I read once that Lewis Carroll was right into the opium and hash when he wrote those books. I can guarantee he was and I know where he got his ideas from, the rotten, low-life, mull-head, druggie bastard.
After a few days they wheeled me and all my drips and piss bottles and other paraphernalia out of the intensive care ward into a room by myself. I lay there, still watching all the fast runners and shape changers, only this time all the voices I heard in the hallway had Irish accents. Also, there was a door outside my room that slammed every time somebody walked through it. I was absolutely convinced I was in the middle of an artillery barrage and the noise was shells landing. I could even hear the shells whistling through the air before they exploded. I spent a day and a night in the war zone before they moved me into a cancer ward alongside five other people. This wasn’t too bad and one young bloke in there had a guitar, which he used to strum quietly. I nicknamed him Slash, and Slash and I got on okay. My hallucinations settled down, then two pleasant young physiotherapists arrived, a man and a woman, who dragged me out of bed and onto a walking frame. It was terrifying. After being on my back for over a week, I was as weak as piss and could hardly move my legs. I begged them not to let me go because I’d never get up again. But they were patient and caring and they got me going till I could slowly get around with a walker. I lost the two young physios and got an older man with a beard who seemed to fancy himself as an intellectual and was absolutely chuffed to find himself looking after an awther. We’d walk down the end of the corridor and along another, then sit down in a little alcove and it was out with the smoking jackets and the brandy and cigars for a literary discussion. I honestly didn’t feel like talking to anyone let alone talking about fuckin writing. But I’d play Ernest Hemingway to his Michael Parkinson till he’d walk me back to my bed.
Trudi and her husband, Scott, started to come and visit me along with Lisa and Otis. I’d developed a craving for watermelon and orange juice, so they brought plenty in for me and the nurses kept it nice and cold in a fridge. Even though I was still pretty fucked, I was at least starting to feel more alive. But there still wasn’t much spark in my system.
One morning, they wheeled this miserable old prick into the ward and put him in the bed opposite me. He looked like a washed-up version of Ronald Reagan with his wrinkly face and slicked-back hair, and could he whinge. I used to lie there and listen to him complaining about the food, the nurses, his bed, anything and everything in general. The first night he was there I was watching TV. Anyone who’s been in hospital knows the TV sets at the top of the beds have a screen about as big as a book cover and a tiny little remote speaker you keep next to your ear so you don’t disturb the other patients. It was half past nine at night and I was into this movie called Misery, about an author who gets kidnapped by a crazy fan, starring James Caan. I was quite enjoying it when I heard, ‘Hey! You’re not in your own room. This is a public ward. Turn your bloody TV off.’
I waited a moment, then replied, ‘WHAT?’
‘You heard,’ Ronald Reagan said, ‘turn your TV off. People want to sleep.’
‘Turn my TV off? Why don’t you go and get fucked, you miserable old cunt,’ I yelled back. ‘If I want to watch TV. I’ll watch TV. Go and fuck yourself.’
‘WHAT did you say?’
‘You heard, you miserable old prick,’ I yelled at him. ‘Get fucked.’
This went on for a while, with me calling Ronald Reagan all the arseholes and bastards under the sun, till finally I said, ‘Listen, you whingeing old cunt. You’ve got cancer like the rest of us. You’ll be dead before you know it and you’ll get all the sleep you want. So fuck off and leave me alone. You fuckin old dill.’ Then I ignored him and went back to watching the movie. When it finished, I put my radio on just to nark him some more.
The next morning they pulled the screens back to give us breakfast and Ronnie was sitting up in bed glaring at me. So to nark him some more I smiled and asked him if he had a good night’s sleep and I was really pleasant to him. It’s an old Zen philosophy: if you want to upset people who hate you, be over-nice to them.
But having the slanging match with Misery Guts was just the catalyst I needed. It got my adrenalin pumping and I started to pick up. But I did have something on my mind. It seemed strange that the doctor who gave me the colonoscopy that nearly killed me, never came in to see how I was. It also seemed strange that he never found the cancer had come back and it was strange how he didn’t seem to know my bowel was pierced. It was fuckin strange all right. But the doctor who operated on me called in and told me that my catheter and stoma would now be permanent fixtures. Great.
There’s an old saying by an ancient ruler: ‘This too shall pass.’ It means whether you’re having a good time or a bad time, it finally has to end. It pertains to everything — life, the seasons, even the world. Eventually it all has to end. And, after almost a month, my ordeal in Gosford hospital was over and they kicked me out. I gave Ronnie another cheerio before I left, then Trudi brought me home. My memory was shot, I’d lost another fifteen kilograms and where I’d once had stomach muscles was now a hernia as big as a rockmelon. Plus I was wearing an emergency call button on my right wrist, I needed a walking stick and my face looked like Hamlet’s father’s. But boy was I happy to be back at the old hacienda. The first thing I did was slip the old cat half a Valium, I had the other half, along with a painkiller, then I kicked back in my recliner and put my giant screen TV on.
Despite itself, the Central Coast has a pretty good home nursing system. Besides Lisa, I had nurses and carers calling round to help me have a shower, take me for a walk and do my shopping. I was pretty fucked and I still needed a walker to get around so I knew my rehabilitation was going to be a long, slow process. But you have to do it. Otherwise you seize up. One thing I did notice was that most of the nurses who came round to walk me were around half my age, overweight and badly in need of a gallop. I also figured having a catheter jammed up your wozza is more uncomfortable then having a superpubic catheter stabbed into your side. Every time you sit down you feel like you’re straddling a paling fence and getting in and out of car isn’t much fun either. So I got a referral to the urologist who did the original bladder operation and he swapped the catheter around. This only took a day at a local hospital and even though it still left me still feeling like I was busting for a piss all the time, it was considerably better.
Lisa drove me in to see the doctor who operated on me in the hospital and he told me he couldn’t get all the cancer out. So he arranged for me to start radio- and chemotherapy in a couple of weeks’ time. He also held his thumb and forefinger about half and inch apart and told me that’s how close I’d come to dying. I said I knew and told him about my NDE. He found that quite interesting. Good for him. But I’m not interested in having another.
People dropped in to see how I was, including, of all people, an ex-cop who I had had a falling out with. I thought that was pretty decent of him and he was genuinely concerned about my health. Before he left, he recommended I try reiki. It had worked for him when he had bad headaches and for some people he knew that had cancer. 1’d heard about reiki, so I thanked him for coming around and said I’d give it a shot. The next day, I let my fingers do the walking and found a woman nearby who did reiki in your home. She said she could come over the following afternoon.
The reiki lady was an attractive skinny brunette in her fifties who wore glasses and didn’t look anywhere near her age. She brought a fold-up table with her, I got on it face-up and she placed an iPod on my chest playing celestial music while some bloke told me to relax and go with the flow. The woman never touched me. She just moved her hands over my body. I relaxed all right and was feeling sort of okay. The next thing I started crying. Great racking sobs of grief with tears pouring down the sides of my face. It was absolutely astonishing. Finally she stopped and I wanted to keep on crying and let it all hang out when there was a knock on the door and a nurse arrived to give me a shower. It broke the spell. I made another appointment to see the reiki lady and let the nurse give me a scrub.
The next time the reiki lady did her thing on me wasn’t quite like the first. There were no tears and I didn’t feel any different. Nevertheless, I made an appointment to see her again. The third time, she showed up in a neat blue dress with her hair done nicely. Before she started she said she wanted to talk to me about something after, and I’d probably want to throw her out of the house. I thought she’s either going to ask me if I was ever interested in getting married, or, she’d found cancer all through my body and I had two weeks to live. She did her thing, which was much like the session before, then she packed up her table and sat on the lounge and we each had a glass of mineral water. I asked her okay, what’s this thing she wanted to talk to me about. She fumbled around a bit then said did I know I was an extraterrestrial? I looked at her for a moment and said no, I’d never really thought about it. There wouldn’t be two hundred people in the world like you, she said. And that’s why I was crying so much that time. That was my friends in outer space calling to me to come home. We finished our mineral waters and I said goodbye to the reiki lady and said I’d be in touch. However, I never saw the reiki lady again. I might have cancer and feel like shit, but I still quite enjoy life as an Earthling and I’m no hurry for Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Fleet Command to run me out to the Epsilon Pulsar Cluster or wherever it is the reiki lady was convinced I came from.
The following week, Lisa ran me out to the intensive care ward at Gosford hospital and I gave all the nurses some chocolates and fruit boxes. They remembered me and were absolutely chuffed. In fact it was quite emotional seeing them all again and knowing I had them to thank for my life. A lot of people take things like that for granted. They shouldn’t. Nurses are angels and under a lot of pressure. They deserve all the help and support they can get.
A day or two later, Lisa and her monster boyfriend went and got Mum from the nursing home and brought her round to see her old cat. This cheered the old girl up, even if the cat didn’t want to know her. And it cheered me up too. It was funny with the old girl now. Ever since I got cancer and couldn’t get out to see her as much, she realised I was all she had. And she stopped being so nasty towards me. She actually told me she loved me. I told her that despite everything I loved her too. I always did. After that we became mother and son again. It was beautiful.
One day Lisa was around doing some cleaning and I happened to remark that the builder wouldn’t give me a receipt for the work he and his merry men had done in the bathroom. I’d been ringing him for over six weeks.
‘Why won’t he give you a receipt’? asked Lisa
‘Because he wants to slip it under the Taxation Department’s radar,’ I explained. ‘I need the receipt to make a claim.’
‘What’s the builder’s name?’ asked Lisa.
A few days later, Lisa called in with some bread and milk and handed me a sheet of paper. ‘Here’s your receipt,’ she told me. What? Apparently Lisa told Otis about the builder. Otis owed me a couple of favours, plus I was looking after his girl. So Otis got a friend from the club, I’ll call him Gronk, and they called round to have friendly word with the builder. I’d seen photos of Gronk in books about bikie gangs and fair dinkum, a gorilla could sit in Gronk’s hand and he’d have to turn side on to walk into a double garage. The builder kept himself buffed up and did all this martial arts training so he got a bit smart with Otis and Gronk. They picked him up, shoved his head into his computer and told him to write out Mr Barrett’s receipt or they’d wrap the fuckin thing around his head. Gronk wanted to give him a flogging just for the fun of it. In two seconds the big tough builder pissed his pants and swiftly printed up my receipt. Hey, it ain’t what you know, it’s who you know.
Now it was time for my radiotherapy at Gosford. I drove myself in and met this delightful little doctor who barked at me for about four minutes, charged me $110, then hunted me out of his office with his clipboard. He gave me the impression he’d rather a see a swarm of wasps in his office than yours truly. I went into another room, stripped down then lay on my back facing towards a round metal ring that looked like something out of Stargate Universe. They tattooed some markings round my groin then zapped me in and out of the metal ring several times. I had six bouts of radiotherapy. By the last one, all around my groin looked and felt like I’d been lying out in the sun in the Simpson Desert for a week and my crutch was burnt to a crisp. Poor Mr Wobbly glowed in the dark.
Next it was time to start chemotherapy. This time I cracked it for an intelligent, caring oncologist who knew what she was doing. Thank heaven for little girls. She put me on Xeloda tablets two weeks on and one week off. Then before you start the next course, you go out to North Gosford Private to get pumped full of Avistan for two hours. If you’ve ever spoken to anyone who’s been through chemo, they’ll all tell you the same thing: it’s a cunt. These are some of the side effects from Xeloda according to the brochure inside the packet: diarrhoea, vomiting, nausea (feeling like you want to vomit), fatigue (tiredness), weakness or weariness, skin rashes, dry or itchy skin, abdominal (gut) pain, fever, constipation, headache, dizziness, loss of appetite, weight loss, increased eye watering or irritation, taste disturbance, indigestion, dry mouth, nail disorders, sore throat, cough, nose bleeds, shortness of breath, muscle and joint pain. They left out morbidity, lachrymosity and irritability. Compared to the cure, cancer is a day at the beach. But the one that totally fucks you is the fatigue. You’ve got no idea how tired it makes you. You have absolutely no desire to get out of bed in the morning and you haven’t got strength enough to lift a nightie. Like I said, ask anyone who’s been through chemotherapy, they’ll tell you what it’s like. And I had at least a year of this to look forward to.
Not long after I started chemo, I knew I was going to have to do something about this Kransky hanging out of my stomach. It almost filled my bag and with my stoma pumping away all night it would burst in bed. I’d have to get up at three o’clock in the morning in the middle of winter, covered in shit, and clean myself up, change my clothes, along with the sheets, then crawl back into bed and try to get some sleep. I got a referral to some specialist, showed him my problem and asked if he could fix it. Sure, he said. I can fix that. So he booked me into North Gosford Private Hospital for an operation in about a week’s time. I went into hospital, had the procedure and got booted out four days later. The bill for the operation? $3000.
The stoma was definitely a lot smaller and I was a much happier camper. Except three days later it fell out again, bigger and better than ever and this time it hurt like buggery. I rang the specialist and made another appointment. But you don’t get to see a specialist on the Central Coast just like that. Up here it’s like getting granted an audience with the Pope. He could see me in a month.
While I was waiting that out I realised I was going to have to do something I absolutely dreaded. I was going to have get the old cat put down. It was winter and I couldn’t have it in the house because she wouldn’t use a litter tray and would shit and piss everywhere. I made her up a bed under the house, I even put a heater next to it and took its food down there. But like me, the poor old cat was flat out getting up and down the stairs. I made a shelter by the front door and fed it there. But the bush turkeys would eat all her food and she couldn’t fight them off. Plus it had arthritis that bad it was dragging its left leg and it would be only a matter of time before a dog wandered in and killed her because she was too slow to get away. So I took her up to the local veterinary clinic and after a good look they agreed it was the best thing to do. I left the old cat there along with its cage. I didn’t have the heart to bring its body home and I didn’t have the strength to dig a hole in the backyard. Worst of all, I had to ring Mum and tell her. I told her the cat died in its sleep and Lisa and I buried her in the backyard. It tore my heart out when Mum burst into tears over the phone. Plus I felt like a nice cunt lying to her like that. But little Liza Minnelli, as Mum used to call her, had a great three years up here with me. I made sure she was warm, I used to feed her topside mince and tuna in spring water because her teeth were old, and she got a steady supply of dope. And none of that generic shit either. Only the top shelf for little Liza Minnelli.
Soon it was time to go and see the medical luminary that performed the brilliant operation on my stoma. He looked at it and went, ‘Mmhh. Yes. Yes. Mmhh. I see. Yes.’ He said he could go in this way. Or he could go in that way. But the best thing for me to do, when it fell out again would be to lie on my back and roll it up, like folding a sock. I thought yeah, what a great idea. When I’m in the middle of Erina Fair or down the beach and it falls out, I’ll just lie on my back and roll it up. That would be a great look for the people around me.
I said to him, ‘Would you mind if I got a second opinion?’
He was somewhat taken aback. ‘Where?’ he asked.
‘St Vincent’s Hospital,’ I replied.
‘Why St Vincent’s?’
‘Because,’ I said. ‘St Vincent’s Hospital is St Vincent’s Hospital.’
What I really wanted to say was, ‘Because I’m sick of being hacked to bits up here by quacks like you. And any chance of getting my three fuckin grand back? You arse.’ But I needed his input for the surgeon down there and I had to keep in sweet, so I kept my mouth shut.
This time I went and saw my old friend and old doctor in Bondi who lined me up with a surgeon at St Vincent’s Private Hospital. I made an appointment to see him, and he said, ‘Yep. I can fix that. It’ll be a bit of a bastard of an operation, you’ll be in hospital a week and you’ll have a drip when you get out. But it’s definitely do-able and you’ll heal up okay. Cost will be about $2200, counting the anaesthetist.’ That didn’t worry me because I’m a capitalist bastard and I’ve got private health insurance coming out my arse. Well, not quite. Oozing out my stoma would be more like it. He booked me in for surgery in two weeks’ time. I’d already arranged with Lisa to drive me to the hospital and she and Otis could flog the guts out of my new Holden ute while I was away if they wanted. So I thanked the good doctor, said I’d see him on the day and went back to my wonderful life of chemotherapy and its delightful side effects.
Gosford Private Hospital isn’t all that bad, but compared to St Vincent’s Private, it’s the MASH 4077. St Vincent’s is the sort of place where you could have Alan Jones in the room next to you, Rupert Murdoch in the other and the Prime Minister in the room across the hall. Plus the nurses treat you like royalty and the place has its own gourmet chefs. Naturally I wasn’t allowed to eat anything. In fact I couldn’t eat anything for three days. But didn’t worry me that much because the chemotherapy had stuffed up my appetite along with everything else.
They operated on me not long after I booked myself in and as usual I blathered on, yakety-yak, blah, blah, blah, right up until the off. When I came around this time, I was covered in drips, with a metal monitor in a bag round my neck wired up to these plastic tabs stuck to my chest, because I get heart fibrillations. I checked under my gown to find the Kransky was gone and I had a normal-sized stoma under the bag alongside a plastic bottle rigged up to my stomach to drain away any excess fluid. I was also in another shitload of pain, but it didn’t take me long to find the morphine button and again that’s where my trigger finger stayed while I waited to be wheeled back to my room.
The doctor came to see me and assured me the operation was a success; in fact he called in every day. The sweet lovely nurses came in on a regular basis and prodded me or poked me, stuck needles in me and checked my blood pressure. And every now and again the tea lady would open my door then shake her head and say, ‘Oh sorry. I forgot. You’re not allowed to have anything.’ All the while I just stayed in a morphed-out haze waiting for the time to go.
I had my player and plenty of DVDs along with my radio. But with all these drips and monitors hanging off me it was a bit hard to move around. So I spent most of my time reading. Mainly Keith, Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones biography. And quite a good read it is. I also had plenty of time to think, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t sleep. I might nod off for half an hour during the day sometimes. But mostly I’d just lie there at night staring out the window at the thousands of flying foxes drifting or flapping their way across town. Watching TV was pointless because on Sky View or whatever they call it, you just see the same shows over and over again bombarded with ads.
One night I was lying in bed thinking about old times and I reflected back on a girl I had an affair with when I was twenty-two. She was a hairdresser from Adelaide, twenty years old and really good looking with a great set of boobs. One night after having a few drinks, we went back to my place for a bit of the other and just as we started getting our gear off, she said to me, ‘Why don’t you tie me up and rape me?’ Now you have to remember, this is back in the sixties and I was just a naive twenty-two year old waxhead who didn’t know much about nothing. But this didn’t seem like a bad idea at the time. So I went out to my old FJ ute and came back with the board ropes ready for a night of debauchery and licentious evil. And even though I’m ashamed to admit it now, and will rue the depravity I allowed myself to be talked into that night for the rest of my life, the sight of that twenty-year-old glamour lying on my bed with her hands tied behind her back wearing nothing but a pair of lacy white knickers and her huge tits hanging out of a half-open shirt which I was about to rip from her body, along with her skimpy underwear, looked absolutely sensational and will be indelible in my mind till I toss tails.
Now the relationship between myself and Mr Wobbly is fairly much one of mutual celibacy. After all the cutting, dissecting and radiotherapy he’s been through, Mr Wobbly’s had enough. Not even the National Aeronautics and Space Administration could get the poor little bloke up. Yet for some strange reason, he can still get his rocks off, have an orgasm, or blow, as we blokes refer to it. The only thing is, you’ve really got to bash the shit out of the poor little bloke at a fast and furious rate to get him there. I don’t know. Maybe it was reading about all the sex and drugs in Keith, lack of sleep or too much on the morph button, but with the picture of that young good sort tied up on the bed stuck in my mind, a sudden stirring started in Mr Wobbly. A small stirring. But a definite stirring. I stared at the picture in my mind, which got more vivid all the time, and thought, bugger this, I’m going to knock myself off. Have a three bags full. A pull. So I slipped up my hospital gown and had a full hand going alone.
This time I really gave it to Mr Wobbly. Kick, punch, knee. Crash-boom-bang. Cop that, you little bastard. It didn’t take all that long and whooshka! Mr Wobbly raised his angry little head up and emptied himself out. I collapsed back on the bed gasping for breath, then after a short while managed to get my shit back together. I put the reading light on, propped up the pillows and went back to Keith.
The next thing I knew, the doors burst open and in charged all these paramedics and nurses armed with fibrillators, an oxy-viva and a great big needle full of adrenalin to shove into my heart. I simply sat back like the cat that just drank all the cream and said, ‘Yeah? What’s up?’ This red-faced nurse glared at me and said, ‘No.’ It was more an accusation. ‘Mr Barrett, your heart rate just went up to 185. Now it’s back to 79.’
‘That’s right,’ I replied. ‘It often does that. I’ve got heart fibrillations, remember? That’s why I take Lanoxin tablets. I wrote it all down when I booked myself in.’ They looked at me, looked at each other, and although they couldn’t quite smell a rat in my room, they knew there was a pretty big mouse hiding in there somewhere. Finally, they packed up all their life-saving equipment and left and I went back to reading Keith. Okay, I told a blatant lie and messed some good people around. But what was I going to do? Tell them I’d been in bed playing with myself? Especially at my age.
The days and nights dragged on and I still couldn’t sleep. A few old mates called in to see me and that was good. Then finally it was time to go. And despite my pain and lack of sleep I didn’t want to leave. For the last three days they put me on solid food: scotch fillet with Hollandaise sauce, beautiful fresh steamed vegetables, pan fried snapper, tiramisu and ice cream. But before I left they gave me a nice big box of hillbilly heroin to help me with my pain. Lovely. Lisa came to get me and with my drip and catheter hanging off me and my grouse new stoma, I split. Before I went, I thanked all the nurse for their kindness and left them with a big tin of beautiful English toffee a mate’s wife had brought me in. I couldn’t eat any because I’ve got diabetes. But it put a smile on the nurses’ faces. Then Lisa drove me home. It was a bit sad not having the old cat there to greet me when I arrived. But I was that buggered after seven days without any sleep, I simply popped a mother’s little helper and crashed.
After that I just rested up. The new stoma worked sensationally, I got rid of the drip and despite a little bit of pain, this time I was able to drive my car okay. I called in and saw Mum a couple of times and while I was listening to her troubles and telling her about my time in hospital and that, I couldn’t help notice she was looking a little frail. After all, she was 92. Then one day I got the inevitable sad news. One of the nurses at Terrigal Medical Centre who worked part-time at the nursing home, told me Mum was off her food and not looking real good. It might be a good idea if I went out and saw her. I got in the car and hurried out to the nursing home. Mum was on her bed with her eyes closed, they’d taken her teeth out so she wouldn’t choke and her breath was just coming in these awful rasping gasps while her right arm kept flicking up and down. She was in her death rattles and it was one of the most terrible things I’ve ever seen. I sat down alongside her, took her hand and howled my eyes out while I told her how much I loved her and I wished things could have been better between us in the past. For a brief moment her eyes opened and she knew I was there, then they closed again. But at least we’d made up. It was just bad luck we’d left it too late. I stayed with her as long as I could then I kissed her goodbye, went home and cried myself to sleep. The nursing home rang me early the next morning to tell me she’d gone and Lisa had arranged for her to get the last rites. We went over and cleaned out her room while she was still lying on the bed then I kissed her goodbye for the last time and we arranged for a small funeral service later that week. I’ll never forget her tiny little coffin sitting in the church covered in flowers. There wasn’t much left of the poor old thing when she left. But apart my father, she’d had a pretty good life and she had a son she could be proud of.
But life has to go on and the grieving eases and I still had a fight on my hands with the old Bengal Lancer. The oncologist was doing a good job and thanks to the chemotherapy the cancer hadn’t spread. It was still there, but at least it was stable. It was funny how I missed the old cat. She wasn’t much of a moggie, but at least she was company. And I read where if you’re sick an animal companion is very good for you. I’ve had dogs and fish and somehow I like cats. They’ve got this cheeky insouciance about them that appeals to me. Dogs will roll over and beg and run around after you because they know you’re going to sling them a tin of Pal at the end of the day. But you’ve got to earn the respect and love of a cat. And if you can do that, you’ve got good mojo. Lisa and I drove out to the RSPCA at Somersby to see what they had waiting on death row. Lying back in this big cage, looking like he owned the place was this red-haired, deknackered kitten about six weeks old. It was love at first sight. As soon as we got him out of the cage he was all over me and Lisa and we were all over him. I said I’d take him. They still had to give him some shots, come back and pick him up in three days. So we did. I gave the lady behind the counter $10,000, she nearly fainted, then we took the cat home and I called him Reg. Short for Reggie Ramjet. Because that’s what he’s like, he’s so fast. He comes charging through the cat flap at the speed of sound and dives straight at my legs, trying to knock me over. I might love Reg and he might be my best mate, but I know he’s going to kill me one day. Not if I get the little bastard first though.
One day I got to thinking, if those surgeons in Sydney could fix up my stoma, maybe I could lose the catheter. Despite having the thing in me for over a year, I could still piss out my old boy. I had to push a bit, because the thing had been in me that long the muscles round my bladder had become weak. But I’d been doing these pelvic floor exercises so there was still a bit of strength left in my bladder. I went down and saw my old mate, the doctor in Bondi, and he lined me up with another surgeon at St Vincent’s Private. The surgeon was a total buzz. He was an Indian-Australian about 198 centimetres tall, an absolute gentleman, and looked like the opening spin bowler for the Mumbai First Eleven. Yet he spoke like Chips Rafferty. ‘Yeah mate. No mate. I can fix that orright mate. I’ll getcha in ’ere in aboudaweeg.’ I was a bit pissed off. He spoke Strine better than me and he had a terrific signed portrait of Don Bradman hanging on his office wall.
Lisa drove me down again and this time I’d only be in there three days. They prepped me and instead of putting me under, a nurse rammed this big plastic syringe full of local anaesthetic up my wozzer. I might have been in St Vincent’s, but I reckon the scream I let out could have been heard at the Prince of Wales. Then they stuck a mini camera up Mr Wobbly to make sure there was no scarring or blockages. There wasn’t. So after that they wheeled me up to my room and all I had to do was drink a certain amount of water, piss in a bottle and some lucky nurse would get to measure it. Then twice a day they’d take another measurement to see if I was emptying my bladder. And I was. It was grouse. The only rotten thing about it was, seeing they weren’t doing an operation I could go straight onto normal food. The chemo might have knocked my appetite around a bit, but I could still force down the tender lamb cutlets, cauliflower in cream sauce, crème brûlée and all the other little tasties they brought me. Lisa came and got me and Reg was happy to see me come home, I was happy to see him and I was absolutely fuckin ecstatic about losing the catheter after all that time, even if I did have to wear a pad just in case Mr Wobbly leaked a bit now and again. But compared to walking around with a meat skewer jammed in your stomach, that was nothing.
After that I just sat around trying to get well, trying to do a little walking and doing a bit of thinking. While I was in a state of deep meditation one day I thought of a terrific quote. Awthers are supposed to come up with deep and meaningful quotations. How about this one: Old age is God’s way of punishing you for poking fun at old people when you were young. Not bad, eh?
Then something happened in my life that can only be described as some sort of epiphany or revelation. A miracle, even. An old mate of mine in Bondi, Phil, once had liver cancer, but managed to beat it. The cancer came back only this time in his prostate. Phil also married the best stacked, best sort and best girl on Bondi Beach and she got breast cancer of all bloody things. But after operations, chemo and her almost dying too, she managed to get on top of it. However, Phil was back on chemo and battling the odds like me. One day a mate of Phil’s, who’d got over cancer, sent him a fax of something he’d trawled up on the internet. Phil faxed me a copy. My neighbour up in Shoal Bay, who had got over a serious illness, also faxed me the same thing. It was a mixture they used back in 1739 to treat kidney stones. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania did a study of the same mixture in 1854, and gave it the thumbs up. The same mixture is also supposed be dynamite when it comes to cancer. Somehow the mixture got hidden in the mists of time. Or maybe the big pharmaceutical companies jumped all over it so no one would find out about it. Knowing the grubby greedy bastards running the multinationals, this would not surprise me in the least. I’ll give you three of the testimonials that were in the faxes:
Case 1. A man with an almost hopeless case of Hodgkin’s Disease (cancer of the lymph glands) was completely incapacitated. Within one year of him starting on the mixture, his doctors were unable to detect any signs of cancer and he was back on a schedule of strenuous exercise.
Case 2. A successful businessman, 68 years old, who suffered from cancer of the bladder for 16 years. After years of medical treatment, including radiation without improvement, he went on the mixture. Within three months, examinations revealed that his bladder tumour had disappeared and that his kidneys were normal.
Case 3. A man who had lung cancer was put on the operating table where they found the lung cancer was so widespread that it was inoperable. The surgeon sewed him up and declared his case hopeless. In April the bloke started taking the mixture and by August all signs of the cancer had disappeared. He is now back at his regular business routine.
When you’ve got cancer you’ll try anything for a cure. I’d even eat dog shit spread on a mouldy bread roll if I thought it would help. Phil and myself thought we’d give it a go. So we both started at the same time and got our blood tests back about two months later.
Phil’s cancer count had dropped to zero. He’s swimming with the Bondi Icebergs most days and the last I heard he was with a bunch of blokes playing golf up at Port Stephens. All my cancer counts dropped dramatically as well. Something called a CRP was 504 when I first went into hospital, it was now 5.8. Another count was 30. Now it was 4.2. Something else that was 15 now read 2.0. A count that was 11 was now 1.3. I went for a CT scan and the result was:
Lymph nodes. No enlarged lymphadenopathy identified. Conclusion: no metastatic disease identified. Prescaral soft tissue thickening appears stable.
In other words, there was no sign of the cancer spreading and what they thought might have been a bit of cancer was a shadow of old leftover scarring at the back of my prostate. If I did have any sign of cancer it was well and truly hidden and the blood tests and CT scan couldn’t find it. I showed both my doctors in Terrigal and Bondi the results and they were astounded. I showed my oncologist, she was chuffed and took me off chemotherapy. It looked like me and Phil were home free. And don’t forget, it wasn’t that long ago I was two minutes away from dying of septicaemia. But it wasn’t only the cancer levels that bottomed out. I’ve got diabetes and all my blood sugar levels seemed to start dropping as well.
So what is this wonder mixture that appears to have saved me and my mate Phil from a cruel death? You’ll laugh and mock when I tell you, but it’s the truth: asparagus. Not organic asparagus grown on some mountain in Tibet. Just plain old tins of asparagus from the supermarket. You cream up a couple of tins, juice and all, in your blender. Keep it in a sealed jar in the fridge and take four tablespoons in the morning and four tablespoons at night. According to research, asparagus contains a protein called histone, which is believed to control cell growth. It also contains a substance which is a cell growth normaliser. But be warned. Creamed asparagus makes your piss smell like a werewolf’s been around marking out his territory. It’s absolutely fuckin diabolical.
Now I’m not knocking chemotherapy or my oncologist. Her putting me on chemo definitely helped save my life. And I’m truly grateful for her care. Also, I’m not claiming asparagus is the magic bullet. The dreaded Bengal Lancer could come back and bite me on the arse any time. He’s renowned for doing this. But Phil and I are convinced it was the icing on the cake. The way it worked for us in the same timeframe we started taking it and got our blood tests, has to be more than a coincidence. I’ll never be as fit or as strong as I was before all the operations. But I’m now taking 50-minute walks and doing a slow hour on my exercise bike, plus there’s a lot more pep in my step and I’m gradually getting my appetite back. And recently I took out an attractive young lady forty years younger than me to a show in Newcastle. This caused a lot of disparaging looks and remarks amongst the locals in Terrigal. Dirty old bastard. Who’s he think he is? Cradle snatcher. It also got me a lot of second looks off the young blokes in the pub next to the theatre when, with her arm in mine, we slipped in for a drink before the show. I also got a lot of strange looks from some of the aunties and their male friends in the theatre. Look at that old bastard. I’ll bet he’s a millionaire, that’s the only way he’d get a young girl like that. It’s probably his daughter. What they didn’t know was that I can’t get it up and she batted for the other side. In other words I’m impotent and she’s a lesbian who lives with her girlfriend. But we’re good friends and we both had a great night. Between that and my exercise, not a bad effort for a dirty, grumpy old man who shouldn’t even be here. Not a bad effort at all. I’m sure Hank Chianski would have been proud of me.
So that’s my ode to Charles Bukowski. Whether I nailed his distinctive style or not, I don’t know. If he read this I suppose he’d probably roll over in his grave. But if you’ve got cancer or know someone who’s got cancer or some other awful illness, tell them to give the creamed asparagus a go and have faith in it working. If I thought I could help just one cancer sufferer with this story, when the time comes, this old extraterrestrial will beam back to his friends in the Epsilon Pulsar System a very happy man. But here’s a sobering thought: specialists predict that in the next five to ten years, one out of two people will develop some kind of cancer. And I know why — black electricity. We’re all living in an electronic soup. Every day we’re being bombarded by thousands of radio, television and satellite beams. Mobile phone beams, sat-nav beams, surveillance beams from space. Ones we don’t even know about. All these beams get mixed up with electricity from power poles and it’s all constantly going through your body. Like the wind, you can’t see it, but it’s there. We’ve all got dormant cancer cells in us. You can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, the black electricity hits them and up comes our old mate, the Bengal Lancer. Think about it.
But before I love you and leave you, I’d like to give you a little tip. The big bloke upstairs gave me a quick boot up the arse a week or so ago. I was pushing a shopping trolley out of a supermarket at Erina Fair when I spotted a bloke a little younger than me coming out of a shop in a mechanised wheelchair. His hands were draped over the arm rests and he was steering it with his chin. I caught his eye and gave him a wink and said hello and he smiled hello back. But as I was walking off I caught his reflection in a shop window. He was watching me and I knew just what he was thinking. Look at that lucky old bastard. He can push a shopping trolley and get around all right. Not like me stuck in a wheelchair. So every night before you go to bed, offer up an audible prayer to the Great Spirit and thank him for getting you through another day and for any good things you’ve got. He likes that. And if the Great Spirit likes that, I’m certain he’ll like you too.