6. The famous Jack who wanted me

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As I walked to the apartment of Jacks, I had an empty stomach and a full mind. I spent the morning doing what I needed to do to feel right. Long walk, even run a few kilometres in there. Meditated for twenty minutes by the water. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. The clingy yet enlightened men from Mumbai awaited me. I thought about getting raped. How the story would tell in a bundle.

‘So let me get this straight’ The judge would say, ‘the night before this man paid for your drinks, took you to dinner and invited you to go to his apartment the next day?’

‘Yes judge’

‘And you didn’t think it would involve giving something in return?’

‘Well judge’ id plead with my wounded ass hole, ‘I was sceptic, I did suspect the possibility of it being sinister, but I was travelling. I had to say yes to things’

‘haha’ the judge would laugh, ‘get out of here you attention seeking whore”

And then I’d walk out, start campaigns, join the metoo movement. Hate men. Hate the patriarchy. I could see the double standards put on women now. In those instances. How if I was a sexy fat ass girl instead of a sexy fat ass man then that would be my given motive. But I walked there anyway. Messaged my best friend at home ‘if I don’t message within an hour, I'm head down biting a pillow with a Mumbai cock in me’.

As I walked to the apartment Rahj was waiting in the car park. Said hello and we walked up. Jack, the man, was sitting on the couch, his eyes still weary from an afternoon nap. We sat and it was slightly awkward, which I endured politely in hopes of smoking a joint. He sent Rahj off to go get drinks. I gave him some money but was clearly not enough and Jack gave him some more. Jack and I sit facing one another. Music playing through a cheap speaker, shit music. He offered me a cigarette and I needed something to do so accepted. I sat there toking away and Jack spoke. It was a strange phenomenon. Something difficult to explain, yet I will try for you. When he spoke I started to feel light. Focused. Patterns made there way on the wall behind him. As if the beginning of a mushroom trip. The geometry patterns expressed in eastern religions on the white walls. The gods were with me. To praise Jack or to raise caution for myself, I didn’t know, there was that free will again. Jack spoke without a flicker of doubt in anything he said. I got comfortable and settled into my own state. Not losing myself.

Jack was actually a good man. For all I know he was the nicest man to ever walk the planet. But because I'm Australian I hated his guts within the minute. So I sat there in the apartment wondering why I was there. I wanted to smoke a joint. I wanted to sit on the balcony and tug the sweet love of Bob Marley and laugh at the ridiculousness of everything around me. Jack started asking me questions. Started to decipher me. Like a lump of flour in a sieve.

“What will you do after you spend your house money?”

“I don’t know, I just want to write”

He laughed with his bucked teeth and droopy eyes,

“What will you write about?”

“I dunno”

“Life?”

“yeah”

“Anyone can write about life, you need a base, you can’t write about life here, you need to go to the Caribbean. Do you read Shantaram?”

“Yeah, I've spoken to him”

“What are you going to do in four years?”

“I don’t know”

I don’t know jack for fuck sake,

I was trying to work out his motive. Did he want to fuck me? did he want to kill me? everything he said was leading towards something, but I didn’t know enough to work out what.

I tried to write this story yesterday, and it didn’t come. I spent yesterday upset. Just too much alcohol after a night with the boys from Mumbai. I couldn’t really find myself. Even now the fingers refuse to go where they’re supposed to. Go home. A man on the other table in this dark sports bar speaks. He speaks in a different language. In a harsh tone. Before he was on the phone and kept saying “hello?”

Call me a bad person but this lights a fire within me and I want to kill him. He is so fucking annoying. Maybe I need to sleep more. Stop watching porn. Meditate. Get a massage. Have a conversation with an adult. I write to feel a sense of accomplishment but the pressure makes me feel small, so I drink, but the loss of pressure results in gibberish, but let me tell you about jack. Let me just put the dumb annoying cunt to my left aside, my fragile motor skills aside and let me write.

Jack worked me over, when I tried to write about it yesterday I was still too close to observe it but now I can see a little clearer. He may be the nicest person in the world, yet I have grown to despise him.

First, he asked about my house, how I sold it. You need to have a base he said. Which I guess is true. He asked about my writing. What are you going to write about? it will take fifty years and even then to write about life you need no distractions. I even feel frustration grow within me as I type. either because of the difficulty to express my words or the hardship in typing them. The letters move. MY mind changes. It all alters except my motive to be someone in the literary field. I don’t want it but I need it to do what is required to feed my unborn kids.

What did jack want?

Well, he moved all the pieces on the chess board but I was a mental king. maybe all that depression was worth it. Nothing can change me, for better or for worse. I get my 9^th little bowl of chips. I continue to push the wrong keys. AutoCorrect is retarded and I'm more. but I persevere. I do this for you. I miss the black keys and still play you a sweet melody.

“how many rooms in your apartment?” says jack,

“three”

“how much the mortgage?”

“two thousand?”

“two rooms, a thousand a month. why didn’t you do that?”

“couldn’t be fucked”

“you need a base, what will you do after four years?”

“I don’t know”

is there anything more infuriating than that line of questioning. Harping on the flip side.

“I wouldn’t even be here having this conversation if I did anything different” I said,

but who gives a shit.

I could sense he pictured me travelling alone as a wounded bird. And maybe I was, and maybe I am. But the good thing about the polarity of my mind that it possesses the creature that wounded the bird. I was lucky and unlucky to have both. To have everything within me. It is proven quite useful when you put yourself in real life situations. Jack asked me about my ex girlfriend. He went on philosophical rants and I agreed with them but he spoke without a flicker of doubt and I guess that’s what annoyed me. It doesn’t take much. The same mind that cause all that anxiety, the one piecing the world together to try and find out who was lying to me. Chasing what is behind my back until I get dizzy and bemused.

A great poet once wrote ‘that if you try and see everything you wont see anything’. That great poet was me. And still is!

So jack really hammered home the fact I need money. The fact that I need intention and that this writing thing wont work out. As I write I think that’s what annoys me, maybe because there is some truth to it. Maybe because there isn’t. but he didn’t speak maybes. And that’s all I do. Raj came back with beers and some fried chicken. I had not eaten yet. Do you need to know that? Maybe not.

Then, through the smoke of cigarettes and the Hindu geometry on the wall all the pieces fell into place. Jack wanted me to work for him, and this is the job.

They muster diamonds up, and jewels and anything shiny; gold, rose gold, silver gold, gold gold. The Indian government used to let everyone do what they want. Which is why their own economy was struggling. But now the new prime minister is a businessman. You used to be able to import and export whatever you wanted. Then, above a million, came with fees and tax and all that adult jargon. Now I think he said you cant take more than 150k without having to go through procedures. So how do they get around this?

I have 100k worth of diamonds. Tell the Indian and Australian government they were gifts for my family. Everything is legal and secure. When I get home I return them, I say my grandmother didn’t like the colour. My grandmother is rejecting a 100k diamond haha. But they get returned to the local company. The local company, in Australia, which he mentioned but I forgot. Put their brand on it. Put their hefty percentage on it. I got a sling of the profits and I do this all around the world.

So now that I knew this, that the grooming was to help me smuggle diamonds up my ass around the world, I was at ease. It all made sense and his lines of questioning were obvious now. Maybe just a polite fellow, caring about a fellow soul. An enlightened man seeing another and hoping to love and live in each other’s stories. But that’s another maybe. I drank them silly in the apartment. Smacked them down like I was Bob Hawke.

“You Australians love beer man”

“I am beer baby”

The thing that annoyed me, and this is my own ridiculous selfishness. They didn’t have any choof. He started making plans for my future as if I didn’t have a say in it.

“Raj will go do the cooking. Big fish. Masala, half in curry half fried. You can cut the onions. We will have more beers. more chilling. Then some smoking. Raj can go get all the food and you go find some weed”

“I don’t feel comfortable getting weed here” I said, because if they weren’t then obviously I shouldn’t be. This was their country after all.

“How about we don’t cook, and we go to the bar?” I said and they all agreed,

“yes, then tomorrow we can cook and be more organised” he said, once again dictating my future for me.

Jack had that about him. And when he spoke Raj was always in awe, but I had a sense he was the financier of Raj’s holiday. When Jack went on these long winded passages of life, when he finished and silence lingered in the air, Raj would look at me with a face of astonishment and say, “Jack is incredible bro”

As if we were children and he was the idol and I wasn’t buying into that. He did tell quite an interesting story, many I must admit. I don’t know why I'm choosing to see it in what seems to be a negative light. Maybe I'm hungry. Or maybe I could see through the job offer. See the inconsistencies. If I could do this and buy my house back within a year, then why was Raj who did the same job getting money from Jack to buy things?

The story happened in Thailand. A man had left his wife after 34 years. He was travelling with a 25 year old. They got speaking and Jack worked his ways. He told the man he could have his girlfriend tonight. The man laughed with confidence and said

‘go on then, try your hardest’

Jack walked up to her and gave her twenty grand. In Thai currency I assume. Which is still $850. He gave it to her and said “Here, that’s for you” and walked off.

She shouted as he left, holding the money in your hand, “Who are you?”

“Don’t worry about that, its for you. Do you want more?”

And within the hour she was following Jack around. Telling him she wants to travel with him. All that sad and sorry shit that whores reveal with a single prompt. The man was broken, he couldn’t believe it.

“That lady was with you for 34 years, loyal to you through everything and you leave her for this” Jack told him as he cried his awakened eyes out, “Call her and speak from the heart”.

He called his ex-wife, or still wife, not sure if the divorce had gone through or not, ill have to ask, and left a voicemail. Moments later she called back.

“Who told you to call?”

“No one”

“Tell the truth” said jack,

“Ok, there is a man here”

And Jack and the ex wife spoke.

“Do you love him?” he asked,

“I do but he just hurts me, I don’t want to be with him”

Jack handed him the phone and said “Sorry bro”.

The young money chasing whore was fuming. Yelling at jack and causing a scene. The bar was on jacks side. It was all quite heroic. Jack was the hero in every story he told.

The man, old and dumb; you can be old, you can be dumb, but you cant be both, then rang his lawyers and told them to give everything he has to his ex wife.

“What are you going to do?” asked Jack,

“I don’t know, I will figure it out.”

Then jack went off and played pool with another couple. So you could see his prestige. You could see how he was asking about my ex-girlfriend. My ex-house. He wanted to promise me the world. Get her back and get it back. But I didn’t want it. I want one thing and that’s the white page. Sitting there innocently and beautifully. The pressure to obstruct its simpleness. covering it with words. And I want my dog back. I want Ralph back, but not even the famous Jack Sparrow could do that.

We left the apartment, me dressed quite cutely with my maroon backpack. We sat there and shared Kingfishers. Laughing loudly at things that weren’t too funny. Getting high fives and fist bumps constantly. Two Scottish ladies sat beside us. Both north of seventy years old. The lads were onto them. I spoke to them kindly. I was the conservative polite white boy. She was an actress in her day, her Scottish husband who didn’t like to leave Scotland sat at home. He was a writer. He would write plays and she would star in them. It was quite beautiful. Then I think Raj told the other one that he wanted to fuck her. They were insulted and left. By this time I felt a little restrained. Drank those boys silly and was half way there myself. Told them I'm heading home. Got something to eat. Saw them walking by but kept my head down, hiding. I felt like Anne frank. Maybe I am. Maybe.

I had messages from jack every few hours for the next two days. I was polite but needed my space. And that’s all I've got for you for now. I hope to speak soon.

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