Free Zigzag Street by Nick Earls

a dark suit, and they have no idea that things are less than perfect. On the other hand, this is the first time it has ever occurred to me that my understanding that they are darkly suited during all our conversations is merely an assumption.
    I wonder if I should say to them, I’m wearing a Felix the Cat T-shirt, I have hair like the nest of a confused bird and I’m bandaged from my wrists most of the way to my elbows and I was just wondering how you were looking today. And Harvey, the American expat in Singapore, says, Well it’s funny you should ask me that Richard as today I’m wearing only a cowboy hat and a garter and I think I just lost a grapefruit in my rectum .
    But they all talk like the darkest of dark suits, like men who are very serious about work, garments and fruit. And I can match them in this, every step of the way, as we talk with an unnecessary earnestness about the kind of document that will make us all happy.

16
    If you stare at the Can of Worms screen saver long enough, you don’t see the worms at all. You see the screen opening up black spaces in front of you, shapes arising with the appearance of order and then metamorphosing into other shapes. Such is the way of the worms.
    If I was paying any less attention to my work I would probably be drooling. I expect that by this time next week the ever-considerate Hillary will have fixed a bib to my chin.
    I know I’m not doing as well as I used to. I know I’m not kicking out of this just yet. I know that for every little thing I can interpret as an encouraging sign, there are probably several that suggest the exact opposite. And some of the examples of this are obvious and undeniable.
    Christmas party, PJ Shelton Bank (Aust), 1993
    I drank to moderate excess, as did many others. I sang all the words to ‘Khe Sanh’, while wearing my tie around my head. I won a prize in the caption competition, though I can’t recall the caption. I danced on the pool table. I left at midnight with my caption prize, a collection of Christmas goodies wrapped in green cellophane, and on my way to a cab I tucked it under the arm of a shoeless man sleeping in Albert Park.
    Christmas party, PJ Shelton Bank (Aust), 1994
    I am unsure how much I drank, and unsure of the consumption of others. I sang ‘The Ship Song’ with such intensity I made Nick Cave look like he was only kidding. I sang Morrissey’s ‘The More You Ignore Me’ during some strange dance with Hillary, who, fortunately, laughed a lot. I was not placed in the caption competition. Specifically, the picture of a starving toothless refugee was not seen to be fittingly represented by my entry, ‘I s’pose a fuck’s out of the question’. I vomited in one of the pockets of the pool table (mostly fluid, but it did manage to hold several of the larger chunks). I was put in a cab early, without a prize, and without great awareness of my surroundings. The 1994 Christmas party was for many the first big hint that I was coping quite badly with Anna’s departure.
    I want things to be better, but they aren’t yet. Some days have an inertia about them. And those that move at any speed seem to move also without any control. I have always liked control, and any lack of it does cause me some discomfort.
    I have always liked control. It makes me sound like some control freak.
    I hope, in my life, for a reasonable level of control. That most days will be manageable, and that most random events that arise should offer me opportunities rather than harm. And I think all that’s okay, within the bounds of acceptability in a person, or a partner. That’s what I hope.
    I am not Jeff Ross, who correctly understands himself to be a creature of routine. A creature for whom change is an enemy. This man’s development, as he well knows, was thrown out at the anal stage. He lets nothing go. If sphincters could arm wrestle he’d be a world