I put peanut butter on a cracker with a plastic knife and say, “Well, at least I have my health."

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

It started in a pub like home. watching the cricket. My internal body clock knew it was Saturday and felt excited, confident, willing. I ended up speaking with two Dutch lads. Two closet fags you would assume, but just European. One facetimes his brother, shows him to us and his brother gets his cock out and waves it around. Then we all skull our pint for him.

I left there to go to a Latin party to meet Ayelen. Bunch of slimy Spaniards slurping around. The energy of the island corrupted me, the full moon lifted all of my spirits. The introvert opposed himself. Drinking caipirinhas and dancing with Ayelen, brain beginning to fade. She left and I can hardly remember that. Still, I chose to stay and keep drinking. She is all I could ever want, and still I searched for more.

I don’t remember getting on the scooter and then I felt the warmth of the road take my skin. I touch my face and it fills my hands with blood. I look down and my two smallest toes on my right foot were missing the top of them. My thumb with a chunk of flesh hanging from it. I got back on the scooter and don’t remember getting home. I tried to shower but it was too painful. I remember seeing myself with the right side of my face completely red. I fell asleep. I woke up, the sheets covered in blood. I stand to check myself, still too drunk to be scared. My phone must have fallen when I crashed. I was convinced I turned a corner and the sand slid me out. I drove the same route, also missing my shoes. The right mirror on the scooter is smashed. If I can find my shoes, I’ll be able to find my phone, I thought. I drove that road and started to think hope was hindering my intuition. I drove home without a phone, without parts of my toes and thumb, no skin on my elbow, a swollen forehead. I laughed.

I went to see Ayelen, because I was scared, because I still wasn’t sure how big of a deal this is. I watched her on the balcony.

“Ayelen, don’t be scared but I have had a bit of an accident”

She looked at me and her soul drooped with disappointment. But she was calm. She told me it isn’t too bad, it’s just a lot of places.

“You need to get this cleaned baby”

I wouldn’t have.

She dabbed alcohol onto my condensing wounds. I had to breathe, I had to hold that pain but know how to let go of it. Process it straight away. Without looking less of a man in front of a woman.

I drove from there to the pharmacy. Hoping she could help or send me to someone who can. Nonchalantly she sat me down and for the next forty minutes cleaned and bandaged everything. Again, the pain was exciting. Something so unbearable that its almost funny. The pharmacist was wearing a blue and red dress, I told her it was beautiful. When she worked on me I could see down her top. Made it all worth it. She had a sticker over her nipple, but I wasn’t disappointed, I wasn’t greedy.

Hi Riley, this is Evgenios from Airbnb Rose Bungalows, you’re not responding to Airbnb and we have to clean the house, are you guys, ok? We saw a lot of blood on bedsheets and pillows 🙏

I got back to the house without my phone and the cleaning lady was there. I think she thought I had left and left everything behind, she would have been looking at all my things, picturing it in her house. I got my second phone, the one the yogi tried to take from me, charged it and used the find my phone app and it told me it was two kilometres away. I searched and found it at 7/11, where there were no bends at all, which makes me think I just fell asleep. The power of alcohol – Sober, I can’t sleep unless I'm laying in a bed with a fan, freshly clean, teeth brushed, something between my fat hot highs and a few chapters of a book. Drunk; whilst riding a scooter.

Today, as I eat those biscuits and write that, after having to redo the bandage on my thumb and tearing a bit of flesh off with it. Ayelen not giving me attention even though I'm hurt. It’s funny how you love someone being there for you that you hate them when they're not. So, I just try and see the positive in it, that there is someone here that could make you feel better, even if she doesn’t. The most romantic thing you can do is leave, with nothing but a thanks and goodbye. Imagination and pain will create stories far more beautiful than reality.

Why is it when I need you… you’re never there?

I wanted her attention so bad I told her to go away, I wanted her attention so bad it needed to come in the form of a rebellion. All a man does because he cannot cry, all the places he paints his battle to express what his pride blinds him from. The true love we want is from the one who taught us about it, our mothers. But we don’t go to our mothers when we need them most to protect them, their comfort comes at a cost and ends up in you comforting them, fighting yourself. So, as a man must do, we suffer in silence. Knowing the pain from your own actions should only be felt by you, even when the joy you muster is shared. Is that not noble? To hide your rot but share your blossom.

I’m at the place where they sell words, the world sent me, using myself. It’s a horrible place, but when you’re home safe, with words in the bag, you can’t help but like it in the end. Accept the circumstances. The one behind the projection. The accident. The pain. The tiredness. The weed. The sleeping pills. The daytime sleep. The fear of time. Your own body, exhausted. There is no point trying to feel better about the topic, you only care about the topic because you’re tired. Soon, you will have your points, your validation, but a better position to express them. Hold on to the little flame now, or let it light some words, but it’s your creation, your responsibility. Have some calmness, beneath everything that isn’t and soon you will be grateful, they’ll have no idea just how dramatic you are. Because all the ones who do, always leave.

I feel very small and very vulnerable, but most of all stupid. I am not saying this as some professional sports player who doesn’t actually give a fuck but pretends to because he is told. I could have killed myself. I could have killed someone else. I could have lost a leg or an arm. My mother would have gotten a call and every fear she has ever fought with her faith in loving me would have been solidified. You have the ability to kill someone’s faith. Your nephews and nieces never being allowed to travel. And the harsh reality of a man who chased a dream to die like a fool.  A win for establishment, rightly or wrongly.

A decision you’d have to sit in heaven with as all the noble cunts look at you and say, “you should be in hell.”
“Yes,” I reply.  “But I only hurt myself!’
“You only killed yourself, you hurt many.”
Then you would be tired of heaven because of the company.

But my friends, the Australians go two nil up against the England cricket team. What a joy it is to be Australian when you feel the first eleven express the traits you admire within yourself. Next time I'm doing the salsa and drinking the strongest drinks on the island I’ll ask myself, ‘What would Pat Cummins do in this situation?’.

Then, I would space my drinks out and drive home only slightly pissed, not completely. Saving some skin, saving some hope.

So here I am, feeling more stupid than even and smarter than before. Pay money for new sheets, but pain and embarrassment are the true cost of a well required scare. With the reality of freedom, with the silence of liberation, once again reminded you got everything you wished for; you are alone.

‍