EVIL OLD MAN (me in 40 years.)
When I had first started, the very first mark for the very first markable thing that I had done received high distinction.
Understandably I wanted to celebrate and went to the pub and got smashed, an almost compulsory thing to do really. The problem was (apart from the problem that I was an alcoholic and that it was bound to be a disaster from the first cooling slide of sweet sweet beer electrifying my mind with promises, promises) – the problem was that I drove home afterwards. I lived about 40 kilometers away in the inglorious suburb of Armadale at the time.
I actually remember crashing very clearly.
The cops were behind me, and they flashed their lights. I said “Woah!” in some kind of guttural slur and in my drunken surprise veered sideways a little and crashed into the side of the bridge that I was driving across.
The car rolled. I wasn’t hurt. I had to climb out of the window not facing the ground, landing in a clumsy heap of smelly Paul limbs before staggering across to the welcoming glare of police lights.
I held out my hands for the cuffs and said “Mea Culpa” meaning as I am sure those who are catholic will remember – “I am guilty.”
I spent the night in a cell, which I cannot remember. I called the tall cop who was busting me “Lurch” and the little one “Curly” and was generally jovially abusive.
The next morning, hm well, everyone I knew was so sick of my shit that no-one would pick me up and I had to walk home. Fair enough really. Ah, that walk. So deeply sick from the poison boiling through my liver and from my own self-despite.
I went to court, the judge there had apparently lost his daughter to the wheels of some other drunken fool, so I got the maximum fine and the maximum license suspension - $1600 and three and a half years. I think that was fair enough too. I sold several paintings whilst still at uni’ and just afterwards for tiny sums - about ten or so, and with this money I was slowly able to pay off the fine.
From then on, though, from the very beginning of first year till the end of my degree I had to go by bus train bus to get to uni’. This took 2 hours each way. So. I spent a LOT OF TIME ON THE FUCKING TRAIN. It is not easy to do whilst carrying canvases 1.6 meters across. And you are not allowed to take turpentine onto a bus, they get mad. Just because it could blow up! I disguised it in wine bottles, though, strangely, I don’t think I ever actually drank any of it.
I saw this guy on the train soon afterwards, cask of goon in hand. He was probably far younger than he looked. He stank. In him I saw myself, my future. What I sped towards with each breathtakingly pleasurable draught of alcohol that I gulped with visceral eagerness.
I am pretty glad I am sober now. Yeah.