Dear Lars,
Lovely to hear from you, my friend! It’s Jimmy J, your buddy from Australia responding to your fabulous blog and yes, I think it’s a wonderful idea and a great opportunity for us to be more creative with our correspondence. I felt like I was there beside you at the Berlin film festival; darling, it sounds like a blast!
The highlights are wild in comparison to the rather tame fare on offer at the Melbourne film festival, which was nothing to sneer at, mind you. You’ve ignited my fetish for contemporary cinema and aroused my dormant libido; just when I started masturbating again after a year of chastity – I almost flooded the apartment this morning, the discharge was so powerful.
How can I resist upon returning to Sin City Sydney after three years in exile? As we speak, I am laid out in the city of ‘sodom by the sea’ facing my demons and traveling after two years battling three AIDS-related illnesses. Oh Lars, it feels like an almighty struggle to see you before this virus takes me out. The last time I almost wound up a dribbling vegetable with a parasitic infection of the brain; Toxoplasmosis, they call it – a parasite common to the domestic household cat, invaded my bloodstream. I hope you don’t have one of those mangy creatures in your apartment or I’ll strangle the damn thing!
As expected, this city is putting on a show, like she does; lifting her skirt and flashing her tits for us faint-hearted visitors from the south. I’m staying with my mother in the gay ghetto of Surry Hills, which I fled seven years ago when I discovered I was positive. We have so many issues to resolve. The healing process is endless, particularly now I’ve progressed to ‘AIDS’ which is a sign of decline, according to health professionals – it’s all just contaminated blood to me.
In fact I feel like my old self already; three days of insomnia, losing patience and weight thanks to the steamy climate, keeping pace with manic locals, unable to afford the cost of dining out. My mother’s ramshackle terrace is not equipped with cooking facilities, you see; aside from an old frypan dripping with animal fat and an outdoor shower with moldy tiles you can hardly squeeze into and a tin can overflowing with cigarette butts by the loo. I have a private room upstairs looking over rooftops, strewn with rubbish, beer bottles and stray cats peering through me with bewitched eyes. The air is sultry, mosquitoes buzz in your ears at night and cockroaches run for cover when you switch on the lights.
These old terraces are crammed on top of each other like sardines; you can almost pass a shaker of salt across the balcony to the neighbour – the drugged up queers thwacking their fingers on a piano till 3am, singing Tori Amos lyrics with a bunch of fag hags. I hide behind a makeshift clothes line with damp trouser legs hiding my weary face, drinking another cup of chamomile tea, considering a dose of Chinese medicine or a valium. In the alleys below, destitute men scrounge for cigarette butts. The world outside really looks like a scene from the ‘Night of the Living Dead’ – it sends shivers down my spine just to take a peek at it. You know, the rich and poor collide in Sydney, much more than in Melbourne; here beauty and filth, madness and mysticism, magic and sorcery seep into each other like an oil painting.
I’ll be here till the sun comes up and a cocktail of sleepers accumulate in my system and I pass out for a few blissful hours before this vacation resumes. Like the good old days, I’ll wander the street with a trembling psych, affected by sleep deprivation and a pharmaceutical soup. Like a ghost, I will step onto buses, rifle through my pockets for change, wander through tunnels, tossing coins to buskers, dine at cafés with unpleasant staff and vanish into crowds of faceless strangers.
Today, I found myself at Coogee Beach; rummaging through the sand for my antivirals and catching waves with mobs of bronzed European backpackers. The saltwater does my skin wonders; it soothes the eczema which erupts over my body with every dose of medication, the warts on my face, the shingles lesions on my thighs, the dermatitis on my rectum and the peripheral neuropathy which bites my feet, shooting through the meridians of my body like pins and needles.
Yesterday I wandered the paths of beautiful Centennial Park, lounging by a lake inhabited by wild geese, ibis, ducks and swans; keeping an eye on the surrounding foliage where gay men stalk each other like hungry predators – I sit in close proximity, licking the chocolate mint ice cream which drizzles down my sticky fingers. Soon, I will leave this place and take my fantasies with me. If I get some sleep tonight I might ride the ferry across the city tomorrow and visit the exclusive suburbs of Sydney harbour where tycoons have their manors with sculpted flower beds and private beaches. Perhaps I’ll spend more time with my mother, resolving our issues or looking up a friend from the past; the ones who haven’t fled this city, gone mad, overdosed or vanished into thin air.
Who knows, perhaps I’ll rendezvous with the man who infected me; hospitalized with meningitis in a Darlinghurst AIDS ward. He is one of thousands of gay men in this city of self indulgence who are reaping the benefits of being HIV positive; through the myriad social services and charity organizations lining up to clean our homes, drive us to the supermarket and administer our drugs; not to mention the food parcels, harbour cruises, theatre tickets and clothing vouchers. Get it while you can, they say; before your virus becomes resistant or you collapse with liver failure!
Life doesn’t end at Oxford Street; it just begins when you become HIV positive; so whack up that shot of crystal meth and take it up the ass on the golden mile – don’t forget to make an appointment with the STD clinic before you go. Three weeks later, rock up for your death sentence, standard counseling session and free medication; why not enroll in an experimental drug trial? It’s all the rage, you hear; you haven’t lived till you’ve been a bug chaser or a gift giver – it’s a party you shouldn’t miss!
Well Lars, that’s the first instalment from my Sydney sojourn; I’ll keep you posted. This is a fabulous idea, by the way and I love you more than anything too… that’s pretty darn special in a city where love can only be found in the barrel of a syringe!!
Blog on, darl!
Love, Jimmy J.
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