Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Altered Perceptions

   By Katzmarek

   This is basically a true story.  It remains the Author's property and
may not be used for gain without the Author's express permission in
writing.





   `Chukka chukka... BLAT... chukka chukka... POP... chukka chukka...'

   Will it start before I run out of hill?  I didn't know or particularly
cared.

   `Chukka chukka chukka... POP... POP... chukka chukka... BANG...'

   The chicken wire baffle sounded a tinny rattle from the otherwise
straight-through exhaust.

   I don't know why we put those things in the pipes in those days.  I
think it may have been the law banning loud exhausts.  It never made any
difference to the volume, as I recall.

   I reached the bottom of the hill and still the damned thing hadn't
sprung to life.  Not that it cracked the bubble of euphoria in which I
floated.  A bus failing to take the corner and depositing glass and
passengers in an untidy heap would have seemed hysterically funny.

   LSD, containing a decent amount of `Speed' in the mix, had that effect.
`Disassociative' was the term some shrink used.  To laugh hysterically at a
traffic accident was, `disassociative behaviour.' Damn!  Here's me thinking
I was just antisocial.

   I pushed the bike around the back of the Florists, hoping it wouldn't be
seen.  I remembered a pal who'd chained his Triumph to a water pipe outside
his bedroom window.  He used the thick safety chain off a railway wagon, I
think, his dog was leashed to the back wheel.

   In the morning, no motorcycle, only water gushing out of a sawn-through
water pipe and his dog looking sorry for itself.

   I lit out for town through the old road tunnel.  The same tunnel I was
going to blast through on the modified Yamaha.  The thunder rolling along
behind me like a Black Sabbath concert and the kaleidoscope of flashing
colours from the mercury-vapour lamps, prismed out in my vision by the
chemicals.

   The light still bathed me with its brilliance.  It warmed my body and
made me throb with wellbeing.  The rolling cars below, thronging their way
to the suburbs sounded like the rush of water from a broken fire hydrant.

   A drunk, pedaling along on an old bicycle wove up behind me and I stuck
out my thumb.  He stopped and I hopped up onto the crossbar.  He wobbled
and swayed as he struggled to propel the over-laden contraption forward, I
used my outstretched foot to keep it off the wall of the tunnel.

   By the end of the kilometre long tunnel, my chauffeur was blown by the
exertion and the CarbonMonoxide.  Leaning over the railing, gasping, he
threatened to puke a half-bottle of Scotch onto the commuter traffic.

   `Generals gathered in their massAAAAS,' I sang at the top of my voice,
`JUST like witches at black masses.'

   An extravagant Tony Iommi air-guitar sweep of the arm and a `DOW DOW.'

   `Evil minds that plot destrucSHUUUN... WEEEOW... DOW DOW... sorcerERS of
death's construction...'

   A perfect Ozzie Osbourne vocal, or so it seemed to me.

   I floated along on my magic carpet through the crowds of shoppers in the
city centre.  A group of teenage girls, taking up the whole pavement as
teenagers do, came strolling towards me.  I thought I recognised one of
them and stretched out my arms in preparation for a group hug.

   They were absolute strangers and parted like the Red Sea with comments
like, `wanker, pervert,' and `it takes all sorts.' Words that reminded me
of my unhappy high school years.

   Words that told me of what a sin it was to be different, to be smarter,
and to be chronically shy.  The sin of `homo' and the sin of knowing the
answers in class.

   I decided to visit my local.  At least it was my local when I lived in
the area.  It was clear across town, but when I arrived there I was not
tired, buoyed as I was with chemical energy.

   The pub was filled with people I knew, from work and from the
neighbourhood.  I was hauled to a table and a handle of draught placed
before me.

   They liked me there, filled as it was in those days with students,
longhairs and freaks of every sort.  Time would come when the pub would be
modernised with chrome and black vinyl and no one went there any more.

   Two pints later and a guy I used to work with suggested we head back to
his place.  That was a metaphor for the sharing of a few joints in privacy.


   His house was on the other side of the public gardens.  They had a
flowering Cherry blossom tree there, a gift from the Japanese government,
and it was floodlit at night.  Naturally this was a magnet for every wasted
hippie in the region, stretching out in the grass and looking at Lucy and
her diamonds.

   The gardens lay on the side of a hill.  The terrain, here is like
Gallipoli's Anzac cove, rugged.  Like that piece of Turkey was blessed with
a temperate climate and covered with a capital city.

   Somehow I hiked up the steep slope, or rather floated, and reached the
top.  The lights of the city spread out like a carpet below, twinkling in
the summer's night.

   The old 1920's style house was quite typical of the area.  This was well
before the 1980's when so much of the city was bulldozed for glass towers
and motorways.

   Molded ceilings, the floor `tongue and grooved' with native hardwood,
the smell a mixture of mildew and coal gas.

   We toked a couple of logs of Buddha.  You could buy a stick for $20 in
those days.  Thinned out with tobacco, Aussie style, you could get about 20
joints.

   Pretty soon the top of my head was burning and I was taking less and
less interest in the conversation, that is, if there was one.  Instead the
dilemma of the heater and the open window became the most important thing
in my life.

   `Why would someone have on an electric heater AND a window open.' It
didn't make sense and it was very necessary for me to solve the problem.

   I still hadn't found a solution when the bomb went off in my head.  One
moment I was sitting on a stool pondering the great question and the next
moment a woven straw mat lay inches from my face.  A growl came from
somewhere and deep down I knew it was my own voice.

   Some psychiatrist said something about `depersonalisation.' I remember
the tapes being wiped, all my reference points marking me as distinct from
everyone else in the room, gone.  For what seemed like an age, I couldn't
remember anything, even my own name, let alone where I was.

   It crept back slowly, first MY name, then someone else's, then where I
worked and where I was.  Two, then three, until eventually 5 Pentobarbital
hauled me back from outer space.

   Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood were singing to me about Phaedra when
the blond, peaches and cream apparition glided into the room.  I was slunk
in an easy chair trembling with an unbelievable terror at the time.

   I'd thought I'd finally done it, you see.  Burnt out significant parts
of my brain from which I would never recover.  The worse fear imaginable,
to me, was becoming a gibbering idiot, blocked up by anti-psychotics and
daily fried by Electro-Convulsive `Therapy.'

   The apparition seated herself close-by, concern written all over her
face.  She was English, I think and she came with an equally blond brother.

   A vivid aura emanated all around her that made the surrounding air
crackle with static electricity.  To say she was beautiful was the biggest
of understatements.  Maybe I didn't really believe I had died and gone to
heaven, but I believed that an angel had dropped in to say hello.

   I tried to talk but my words came out disjointed and meaningless.  She
responded with puzzled expressions and I knew I was not doing very well in
the mating game.

   I needed a lift home and she had a car, a 1964 Ford Anglia.  She said,
`sure she'd give me a lift,' and `are you going to be ok?'

   She had a tape of Van Morrison and played it all the way home.  I hated
Van and still do, don't know why, after all, it was supposed to be MY
generation, wasn't it?

   But she smiled with concern at each traffic light.  I didn't want her
`concern,' just her infatuation.

   I don't remember conversing at all, although I think I must have said
something.  Suffice to say it probably didn't make a lot of sense.  At some
stage I must have mentioned my address, after all.

   She deposited me with my flatmates and left.  I slept through till the
afternoon the next day, or the next, I'm not sure.

   I recovered the bike behind the Florist shop, still with the fuel tap in
the `off' position.  It fired up first kick and I ran it the short distance
home.

   Something had shifted for me that night, however.  A couple of hundred
buck's worth of LSD and `downers' went down the toilet for a start.  My
battered brain had demonstrated it was not indestructible and I'd had
enough.  Maybe I'd just taken a quantum leap in maturity.

   My angel did return, though.  I'd organised a party at my flat and an
embarrassingly few turned up.  I never was a good organiser and it just
confirmed for me that my lousy self-esteem was well earned.

   My angel, her brother and another couple effectively doubled the
population of my lounge.  On home ground I was more talkative and my
newfound drug abstinence found my mind unusually clear.  Albeit I was still
somewhat `strung out' and suffering repeated `acid flashes.'

   But I didn't care when the walls started to wobble, because I got
experienced at ignoring these little inconveniences.  So the rain was
coloured and lights radiated the visual spectrum, but only the primary
colours.

   The biggest handicap, though was a complete inability to deal with
stress.  I would just freeze up into some catatonic state and be completely
unable to move a muscle.  Then miraculously it would set me free just as
quickly, like an engine piston pre-seizing.

   Some twenty years later, a woman that had known me back then told me
she'd always thought I had been a `spunk.' This little revelation was far
too late to take full advantage of, but my `angel' must have seen
something.

   We talked well into the lightening sky as dawn stalked us.  I don't
remember the passing of the hours, they just `went.' She finally felt the
first twinge of fatigue and I suggested we sleep in my room.

   I didn't want to stop talking, I was afraid the magic would end and we
would resume our `normal' lives.  However, she turned her back to me,
pulled my arm over her and held me tight.  I was too scared to move it,
even after her slow rhythmic breathing told me she was asleep.

   We awoke around noon, still spooned together and she got up quickly. 
The faded denims were on in a flash and she told me she really enjoyed
herself and we must, `do it again, soon.'

   Sadly we never did, we just never managed another `get together.' I
think she became a lawyer, specialising in family law, at least so the
rumours went.  In fact, now I don't even remember her name.

   Katzmarek (C)