Free He Died with a Felafel in His Hand by John Birmingham

on Asia and food. We threw a party to introduce him to Brisbane, but he was comatose in a corner by nine o’clock. Completely pissed. Vomiting and sucking air through the mess with a thick, obscene snorkelling sound. Every so often he’d claw his way up, shuffle round and stare at you, nose to nose. It was very weird. After that party, he awoke in the dark screaming abuse at some imaginary old guy he saw at the foot of his bed. Said it was the guy on the cover of The Cure album. Standing On A Beach .
    ‘Freak show!’ said Magyver.
     
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Mandy
I was hanging around Martin’s house over Christmas. There were heaps of guys hanging there too. They were getting into not wearing shirts. Then they started writing words on their chests. Slug. Loser. But that wasn’t cool enough so they started cutting it into themselves with razor blades. Then they were sticking pieces of broken mirror onto their bodies with glue.
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    Mick’s neighbours were Colin and Stepan, a pre-realised Xerox of Beavis and Butthead. Their rooms formed an L-shape around two sides of the lounge, but they had so much in common it suited them to kick out the fibro-slab divider and hang a curtain between their respective domains. They were friends of Neal’s and were attracted to Duke Street by the minimal rent and crack house ambience. They gave our bucket bong such a workout that if you somehow ingested the water you’d die. You’d have been the first reported dope casualty in history. There was a different type of smell around their part of the house. That was Stepan. He ate so much speed his body ran at white heat nine days out of ten and exuded a really foul, sour sort of amphetamine sweat. His thesis supervisor refused to see him unless he bathed immediately before their meetings.
    Colin, with two failed attempts at adult education behind him, was trying to work up some enthusiasm for the world of employment. Seeing as Stepan managed to vacate the house by 9.30 most mornings – to get some quality time in at the campus video game parlour – Colin asked him to be sure and wake him up before leaving, so he could seize the day, get a job and a life. Stepan tried for a week, but he’d come back in the afternoon and Colin would still be getting out of bed. Then he’d abuse Stepan for not getting him up. Finally Stepan closed all of the windows and doors that could be shut, slapped Colin awake, put a lit candle on the floor, and said, ‘I’ve turned on every gas tap in the house. If you’re still asleep when the gas reaches this candle, the house is going to blow up and you are going to die. If you just get out of bed and snuff out the candle you are also going to die, because the gas will choke you to death.’ The house didn’t blow up, Colin slept through the whole thing, and the place smelt of gas for a month. But we were so impressed with Stepan’s Man from UNCLE ingenuity that we all made a point of rushing into Colin’s room each morning and kicking the shit out of him in a bid to make him change his ways. It did. He moved out.
    Boredom is a terrible thing in a group like this. When you are living alone, you can get out of the house and deal with it. But when you get a lot of bored people in one place, it gets ugly. You’ll wind up putting bananas in your underpants and butt-walking across the lounge room. Or running around the block, naked, with a purple cape flapping behind you, singing Nananana Nananana Nananana Batman . It was boredom that drove Howie and Neal to smash the beer bottle pyramid to pieces. An orgiastic riot of boredom-inspired destruction. Magyver and I came home to find the kitchen table splintered to matchwood, the fridge door hanging by one twisted metal hinge and a month’s worth of meat patties and Sara Lee Poundcake splattered and smeared over the walls and ceiling. Woolworths had been running specials on both items and Magyver had insisted on buying in bulk for an even bigger discount. The store manager’s