THE MARVELOUS FUCK UP

I’M A MARVELOUS fuckup, I thought to myself as you sometimes do. I mean, I’ve fucked all sorts of things up. I bet you have too, haven’t you? Yes you have. Well, I’m to the point of this adventure in daily misery to remind myself of something good that happened in my life. There’s plenty, of course there is, but the first one that came to mind is the reptile park.

So, I’d arrived. I didn’t know this group of people from a bar of soap as the expression goes. None of them knew I was completely insane yet and in those times everything just seems fine. “Maybe he’s just smart?” they say to each other – people are always trying to convince themselves of the opposite of reality. I do it all the time. I will own a house one day, I think, I will drive a car to the Great Ocean Road and see what it looks like one day. See, we’re always kidding ourselves.

But the retile park, man this place was something. I mean, it was probably called an aquarium but they had lizards and things in there and from an early age all I can remember is being obsessed with lizards, and all other forms of reptiles. Maybe it’s that they have cold blood, maybe it’s the way they’re put together. I don’t know what it is but I used to catch these little skinks in the back yard when I was three, take them home, draw them; and then release them back into the large suburban checkerboards of grass and sunshine. I wasn’t interested in friends, I was interested in drawing these things. And draw them I did, a lot – and that filled me with happiness.

Drawing something is like creating it. You have to figure out its skeleton and insides, and then the way the outside all fits on top of it – then, to make it interesting it has to be doing something; yawning, closing an eye or some such. I would look at the things for hours and they’d just look straight back at me while I figured out how they looked, I recreated them my own image and a piece of photocopy paper with a pencil.

I hadn’t ever been to an aquarium, let alone one that had reptiles in it before. I was thirty-six years old and I didn’t know these places existed. My life, for some reason or another, had been one of complete fear of the outside world. I had to be drunk to leave the house or talk to someone. I’m ashamed of it. I’m completely and utterly ashamed. I am, as you say, an alcoholic.

The sun was shining and this was Queensland, far up North in Cairns. People spoke with different inflections in their voice there, but it was, of course, the same language. The perspectives were different however. Everything was of course different what the hell am I talking about it was on the other side of this massive island called Australia.

When I go crazy, people call it mania. It’s obviously because I repress a lot of things. I don’t know why I‘ve repressed them but repress them I do. I feel as though if somebody knew what you thought of yourself they’d feel miserable for you and never want to be around you; so you put on this happy face sometimes and that’s the face you want people to see. You can keep it up and keep it up but, if you don’t have your down time; time to get your juice back - well, you just fly off into the sky and fall like a bunch of diamonds scattered on the beach, lost and unable to be differentiated from the sand.

It isn’t like this for retiles. Or at least, I suspect it isn’t. The sequels to the Jurassic Park films might have you believe otherwise but I don’t think the lizards I’ve seen wonder too much about owning a house or turning up to a dinner party with an ironed shirt.

The group of people I was with were lovely people. They terrified me but they invited me in with them. One even phoned me to ask if I’d like to come along. That’s unusual for me. I don’t get invited to things. I’m not good at parties because I’m the perfect fuck-up. I enquire about things, I’m curious about things, and that offends people. Plus, I’m drunk all the time so I have a tendency to pass out, or say something to someone that makes them cry and then I write these god damned stories about it to try and figure out why I’m so miserable and it always gets back to someone and then you never see them again. I think I sound very pompous in my speech too which is also some kind of shield I had no idea I’d made. I read too much probably and the words in your head sound different to when you say them out loud. I’m not good at separating the two.

When these things come up I don’t even know if want happiness. The misery seems relatable and there’s a certain comfort in the cage of the mind that you understand yourself to be in. It’s the only cage. And if you go there willingly sometimes you can beat the cage for a while, but running free has its consequences. The consequences are that freedom and terror go hand in hand; without a barrier you can take things where they ought not to go; and people understand this if they’ve been socialized properly – but I struggle to learn this now at my age. I think about it a lot – how to simply act. But then, when you’ve fucked up as I always inevitably do; the feeling of it makes you never want to leave the safety of an uncomfortable blanket ever again.

I walked on the clean cement, in air conditioning. Children ran around with their parents, and Grandparents. “Look at this!” they’d yell and a smaller one would clap their hands and fall over or something and you’d just love to see it – I’d remember when it wasn’t it that far to the ground and falling over didn’t hurt; it was just the shock of your reality changing for a little while. Maybe it’s still like that but they fall is conceptual now.

The lizards were all in big perspex enclosures. They had them all rigged up with temperature gauges, or thermostats or what have you; to keep these little guys feeling good about themselves. Their cages weren’t mental cages. I don’t know if they could see the walls. There’s a certain sadness one feels at looking at an animal in a cage; there’s also a sense of wonder and curiosity that goes with it too. One day it might be outlawed, or maybe it’ll be the only way we keep them alive. People predict bad thing for the future of the planet.

WHEN I WAS five or six, Jurassic Park was coming out. At the cinema. I didn’t know what a cinema was but it wasn’t hard to imagine things back then. I always retreated into my mind and never said much as a child. I was convinced my mother wasn’t my actual mother and that I had a friend named Jack who walked around with me when we were looking for these skinks in the back yard.

My mother was depressed at the time, her sisters had died. She sat on the couch a lot while I lay on the floor drawing lizards. My father worked away on ships. But this one afternoon, after I’d walked home from school, my mother said “let’s go see Jurassic Park – I’ll see if it’s on and if there’s seats” – she made the call and then we were on our way.

I marvelled at the screen. I still do, every time I see it. I cry every time I watch it for some reason. It’s probably because I’m ashamed of what I’ve become. Those dinosaurs really tore things up man, it was brilliant. The next day at school other kids gathered around before the bell to ask what it was like, a teacher stood there too, all of them had eager eyes

“A man gets eaten on a TOILET!” I yelled, and I remember the teacher looking concerned and walking off, ushering the other children away. Life’s always been a bit like that for me, maybe it’s the way I said it, or the particular scene I chose to bring up. To me, it wouldn’t ruin the film for the other kids but I think, for them, it was violence; and that was of course not to be promoted in the school yard.

AT THE AQUARIUM I felt that same sense of wonder that I did at the cinema for the first time. Thirty years later. I mean, there’s probably a place similar to that reptile park somewhere here in this city but it’s never crossed my mind to go and see it. Crowds terrify me, like I might have said. I suppose I feel these are places of wonder for real people; not for me. And really, that’s nonsense.

The reptiles would hang on branches and sometimes open their mouths and you’d see their tongues. I saw a guy feeding tiny mice to a snake that just gulped those things right up in one bite – one, two, three. It would have taken more if it could have gotten it.

I wasn’t an outcast. I was part of a group of people who were just regular people going about their lives. Maybe I’ve thought myself into oblivion. Maybe I’m an idiot. Maybe I’m all kinds of things.

After the retile park I walked down the street with this group of friends. They laughed. They had clean teeth and clothes and they talked about subjects that didn’t enquire too much into anything; they were just pleasant exchanges in the sunshine. The aquarium had been nicer than any bar I’d ever seen. And it gave me more happiness than twenty years of sitting in them looking at the silver bubbles against the golden liquid catching the side of the glass. The circle that the condensation left on a beer coaster was nothing compared to the eyes of a lizard.

I’m forever indebted to someone for those memories. They invited me and I couldn’t believe my luck; an invitation to go somewhere. I spent my last buck flying there and back and I wasted all my money like a king for a few days and then I was to be a dunce for the months and months that followed.

I hurt that person who invited me because I became overwhelmed with debt and I tried to drown it all out. I still have those happy memories of the reptile park. I get to have those. There won’t be any more to share with that person though. You know when it’s over. I keep wondering if they have any happy memories of our time together or if it’s all something best to forget.