Art and the Drug Addict's Dog

Art and the Drug Addict’s Dog

Paris Portingale

Smashwords Edition

If Art needed proof of an afterlife, Alex had it by the truckload. ‘I saw Ray Charles last night. Not the singer, another one, a fat white one. He went over Niagara Falls in a barrel in 1934.'

MoshPit Publishing

Hazelbrook

Published by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

Shop 1, 197 Great Western Highway, Hazelbrook NSW 2779

Email: books@moshpitpublishing.com.au

Website: http://www.moshpitpublishing.com.au

Copyright © Paris Portingale 2010

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Author: Portingale, Paris, 1947–

Title: Art and the Drug Addict’s Dog

Publisher: MoshPit Publishing, Hazelbrook, NSW

ISBN: 978-0-9806704-3-1 (ebook)

Subjects: Fiction

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review) no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

Editing: Jennifer Mosher, AE

Proofreading: Bronwen Vern-Barnett

Cover photo: Jordan Lee Chappell

Cover layout: Verve Studio

Cover models: Gerry the Dog, Darcy Gorman, Art Handel

Every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge copyright. However, should any infringement have occurred, the publisher tenders their apology and invites any copyright owners to contact them.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to take the opportunity here to thank the following people.

My wife, for her 33 years of solid support, and not just in helping me home from the pub.

Adolf Hitler, for not killing my father at Tobruk that time, something that would have made my conception somewhat more than awkward.

Everyone at Mosher’s for being so utterly fabulous and wonderful, and for so firmly crossing out so many of the sillier bits of this book.

Adolf Hitler again, for losing the war, as this book would never have worked in German. It certainly wouldn’t have been as funny. Mein hund hat keine nase. Wie riecht er, mein Fuhrer? Blutiges schreckliches. See.

Everyone in the world who has bought, is in the process of buying, or ever will buy this book.

Thank you all

Paris Portingale

October 2010

A note from the Author

Many years ago, I used to write ridiculously stupid letters to the Sydney Morning Herald’s lift-out TV guide correspondence page.

Tony Squires was the editor at the time and one afternoon, probably curious to see just who this idiot really was, he rang me at home. I was so taken aback I was struck speechless and came across as an even bigger idiot than my letters suggested. The call, however, did give me the encouragement to begin writing slightly more sensible material on something other than The Simpsons.

So, thanks Mr Squires. Fate is such a funny thing. One minute you’re living a happy, normal life, then suddenly a seemingly innocent phone call leaves you responsible for a work such as this, a mark of Cain you will sadly carry with you to the grave.

In appreciation

Paris Portingale

October 2010

PROLOGUE

There were policemen, three in their uniforms and one in a suit. The suit policeman was in charge and he spoke in one to five word sentences. I heard him say, ‘Get the door there sergeant’ (a long one), and ‘Fuck that’ (a short one), ‘You’ (probably the shortest) and, out in the car park, lighting a cigarette, ‘What a fucking mess’ (medium to long). There was an ambulance, Nolan the driver, Phil his assistant, and a stretcher without wheels because stretchers with wheels hadn’t been invented yet. Which was why Nolan had Phil: because one man can’t carry a stretcher—the physics make it impossible.

There was a lot of blood of course, and other grey stuff, and it was concentrated on two walls, most dense in the corner, in the V where they met.

There was Cath the cook, crying in the kitchen. And up in the main bar of the hotel there was a sprinkling of customers who’d stopped drinking briefly, then resumed again.

Nolan and Phil were taking the stretcher out the back way. Nolan had parked out the front initially but the suit policeman told him to bring the ambulance around the back to the car park because he was in charge, and so Nolan left the siren on because it was his ambulance.

There will always be conflict in any situation where more than one person is involved. And the more people, the greater the potential for back-biting and name calling. And you only have to look at the two big ones from the twentieth century, the two which had pretty much everyone involved, even the Swiss in their own funny little way, to see what I mean. The Great War, and then the next one, when they started numbering them, to avoid confusion further down the track, because it was becoming clear they weren’t going to stop there.

My father was there but he had only a peripheral involvement, he didn’t have a speaking part. Cath the cook had lines but you couldn’t understand them and, later in the afternoon while getting the corned beef on, because people have to eat no matter what else is going on, she threw an epileptic fit and the barman had to be brought down to put a spoon handle in her mouth to stop her swallowing her tongue.

I, myself, was feeling a mix of emotions: guilt, because in a way it was my fault (I was certainly up there near the top of the cast list anyway), and a sort of dry anger at the universe which had turned on me when I was still all young and unprepared. I'd never thought it would do that. Now I had trust issues.

CHAPTER ONE

What if, when you die, as a special surprise to both the believers and the non-believers alike, you didn’t shuffle off to a heaven in the clouds to meet up with Mum and Aunty Ellie and the kid that used to kick the crap out of you at school? Or, in the event that you were bad enough during your lifetime, a trip down in the red elevator to the caves of fire? Or, if you were just so-so, a little bit good, a little bit bad, but mostly nothing, a trip to purgatory, where the benches are all hard and uncomfortable, and nothing comes on time and the staff, all angels but grubby ones, are sullen and uncooperative, or boring to the extent that when they speak it’s like time’s going backwards and you’d had your sentence extended?

What if, when you die, none of those are an option at all but everybody, good, bad or indifferent, all religions right across the board, including the ones that have you coming back as a dolphin or a paramecium, what if every person gets their own black, infinite void to float in? For eternity. You can move around but there’s no point of reference and nothing to see, so it’s pointless. You can do it if you want to though. Other than that, all you can do is play mental naughts and crosses with yourself and replay old conversations and arguments from when you were alive. You can’t commit suicide, you’re already dead. You can’t go mad, you don’t have any synapses to misfire. But you do have a million, billion, trillion years or more (and when you get to the end of those there’s another set there waiting for you) of self contemplation mixed with bursts of tic-tac-toe where you always win, and old recordings of the argument with the garage mechanic and discussions about the material for the new curtains in the living room. A traditional hell would be better: you’d have some other people around and you could bitch about things together, complain about the humidity and how it was that, more than the heat itself, the humidity made things so uncomfortable. ‘If only it were the dry heat, like we used to get in Vogel’s Hole, when I lived there. Boy, some of those summers, I tell you.’

~~~

I got a dog from a drug addict named Rainbow Davis. It was an unusual dog for a drug addict: a poodle, a large one with brown dreadlocked wool and paws the size of fists. He wanted thirty dollars for him. He looked desperate and the dog looked desperate as well, sitting on the street corner beside him on the end of a piece of rope. Rainbow obviously needed a drug of some sort when he stopped me—his forehead was perspiring and it was twelve degrees Celsius. His hair was greasy and his hands were shaking and he smelled of urine and stale sweat and something else unpleasant. I told him to bugger off and walked on home and went inside and turned on the TV and sat down on the couch and watched five minutes of something. Then I got up and went out and walked back to the corner and he was still there. I took a fifty out of my wallet.

‘I’ll take the dog,’ I said. ‘Have you got change?’

‘Oh fuck, I don’t have change, man! I don’t have change. Do I look like I have change?’ He looked at the note. ‘Make it an even fifty, an even fifty, man. Let’s just make it fifty and you take the dog.’

‘You said thirty,’ I said. ‘He looks like a thirty dollar dog.’

‘I’m not a fucking shop, man, I don’t have change! Fifty and he’s yours, drive away, no more to pay. He’s a good dog, outstanding dog.’ He was looking at the note. ‘He’s a fifty dollar dog, man.’ He put the end of the rope into my hand. ‘Come on, drive away, no more to pay. Fifty bucks, fifty dollar dog.’

‘Forget it,’ I said and handed the rope back.

‘Oh fuck me!’ Rainbow was trying to think on his feet, difficult when you’re that messed up. He was looking at the ground, trying to concentrate, shifting his weight from one leg to another, saying, ‘Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!’ He was using it as a mantra to get a focus on the situation. He looked up and thrust the rope back into my hand. ‘Hold onto this,’ he said and snatched the fifty. ‘I’ll get change.’ And he trotted off down the street, tripped on something, fell, then picked himself up and turned around and did a thumbs up. There was blood starting to run down the side of his face but he was smiling reassuringly at me as he went off around the corner. I squatted and ran my hand over the dog and he snorted and shook his head. You could feel his ribs, he was so thin. I waited a while, not really expecting Rainbow to come back, but he did. He had twenty dollars and a blender with its cord dragging behind him. He held it up. ‘You can have this for twenty. Take it and we’re square, drive away, no more to pay.’ He’d taken something and was clearly feeling better—his pupils were pin pricks. ‘Outstanding machine,’ he said, ‘twenty bucks, no more to pay.’ The jug hadn’t been cleaned in some time—it still had something green in the bottom and Rainbow shook it and it came off the base and smashed on the pavement. He was bending to pick up the pieces so I pulled the twenty dollar note from his hand, gave a tug on the rope and walked home with a dog.

Back home he sniffed around the place and I put the heater on and poured some milk into a bowl and put it in front of the radiator. He sniffed it and drank some then did another lap of the room and he sniffed and then drank more milk. He was underweight and suspicious. Eventually, he lay down in a corner on the other side of the room and went to sleep with his eyes open. You could see his balls. They were large and oval and they glistened.

I typed an email and sent it to Minnie Fielding, a friend who had no dog. I was looking at the dog asleep across the room and I typed:

To: Minnie Fielding

Cc:

Subject:

I have a dog now. I bought him from Rainbow Davis, the junkie on King Street. You’d remember Rainbow if you saw him, he looks like a hamster would if it had a drug problem. If you ever find yourself buying something from him be aware he has an unusual pricing structure. The dog cost me thirty dollars. I forgot to ask his name. Being Rainbow’s dog, it would probably be something like Nembutal. So he’s the thirty dollar dog for the moment. You should get one for yourself, they’re a great thing to have around. They drink milk and sleep with their eyes open.

Art.

After sending it, I saved it in my miscellaneous folder and decided to call the dog Fletcher.

~~~

Doctor Harvey thought he was about a year old. It was my first visit to a vet. Fletcher was put into the computer as Fletcher Handel, the protocol at veterinary clinics where the patient gains the owner’s surname.

There was a man already in the waiting room—he had a brown paper bag and a dog. He showed me what was in the bag: two plastic jars labelled ‘Jason Watt—left testicle’ and ‘Jason Watt—right testicle’. Jason’s balls. Mr Watt spoke conspiratorially. ‘Is he here to be knackered?’ He looked at Fletcher.

‘Just a checkup,’ I told him. Fletcher sniffed Jason’s head. Jason just looked distracted.

‘This one was done on Monday, that’s why we’re here—faulty job.’

I got a picture of an infected scrotum. There was pus. It would explain the anxiety.

‘Poor guy,’ I said.

‘Three days he’s been done, still wants to fuck me. It was all supposed to stop, the pissing, the fucking. Look at my trousers!’ There were stains.

‘Obviously didn’t take. I want a refund or the cunt’s going to put these back.’

‘Can they do that?’ I asked. I supposed they could—medical science was screaming ahead now they had the genome sorted out.

‘Must! Look, they marked these left and right. Why’d they do that if they didn’t think they could have to go back?’

‘You’re probably right.’

‘A hundred and seventy-seven dollars! That’s a lot of money if he’s still going to look at me like that.’ He shook one of the jars—the one with the left testicle. ‘But they’re beauties aren’t they?’

I had to admit they were.

~~~

Doctor Harvey was bleeding slightly from the chin. He wiped it with a tissue. ‘Owner’s a bit upset,’ he said. ‘The animals pick it up. Just a nip.’

‘He said the castration hadn’t taken. Could that be right?’ I asked him.

‘Residual testosterone. Flush out time can be more than a week—it’s a powerful hormone.’

‘So, you can’t put them back?’

‘No, the tissue’s dead. There’s no putting back I’m afraid.’

‘He showed me they were labelled left and right.’

‘We put them both in one jar when we can.’ He had Fletcher up on the examination bench, rubbing his ribcage. ‘He’s a bit under weight,’ he said.

‘He used to be owned by a drug addict. I got him for a fix.’

‘There should be laws,’ he said. His stethoscope was moving over Fletcher’s chest listening for things.

‘I gave him thirty dollars,’ I told him. ‘He was going to throw in a blender.’

There was nothing wrong with Fletcher. When he’d finished the examination, Doctor Harvey asked, ‘Anything else I can do for you today?’ He was looking at Fletcher’s balls. The examination cost fifty dollars, the same as a visit to Doctor Watson, my general practitioner.

~~~

So, when we got back I got a notepad and a pen and I started to make a list of character traits to look out for that could prove awkward. It was a new pad, open at the first page, the cover flipped back over the spiral binding. New dog, new pad. The list began to form by itself.

Bad genes

Bad manners

Wrong shape

Only one kidney

Barks

Bites

Pisses and shits indiscriminately

Leg fucker

Mad

Picky eater

Killer

Idiot

Disobedient

Can work out how to open the fridge

Farter

Tyrant/Despot

Crap in a fight

Fletcher was licking himself. I looked over at him and he stopped licking and looked at me and I flipped over to a new page and wrote:

Hypnotic eyes, could possibly hypnotise. Could be a plus

Then I went back to the other page of possible hurdles to our relationship:

Snorer

Indolent

Thief

Destructive habits

Jumpy

Stinky

Eats with mouth open

Slob (All dogs are naturally slobs of course. The species has no natural sense of order)

Ratbag (Slightly different from mad)

Sees dead people

I was starting to run out at this point but I have a friend who sees dead people and I didn’t want a dog that saw them as well. Alex Elinsky saw dead people. He was Russian.

My mind started to wander after I wrote ‘Sees dead people’. If my theory about the infinite void was correct then how did dead people get into Alex Elinsky’s bedroom at night? It would mean there’d have to be a loophole, a trapdoor in the void somewhere. It was an interesting thought—it opened a whole new range of possibilities. If you could move in and out then it wouldn’t be just mental naughts and crosses for eternity—there’d be day trips, and night time pop-ins to all those people you’d been meaning to catch up on.

I laid down on the couch and woke up twenty minutes later to find the dog had pissed in the middle of the carpet, so I got the pad and ticked, ‘Pisses and shits indiscriminately’. That was all a year ago, a year and a bit.

~~~

CHAPTER TWO

At night, Alex Elinsky sees dead people floating up through the floor of his bedroom. They speak to him. They’re dead people from all over the world, from all different times and they all have a story to tell. Multilingual Alex can understand many of them, and the others he just lets wash over him, absorbing the tone. He’s made recordings, and he played one to me over the phone.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘listen to this.’

As I listened, he put the phone down and turned something on, then the receiver was filled with static for about twenty seconds.

‘Did you hear that, did you hear it?’

‘It sounded like static, Alex.’

‘You’re not listening properly.’ I heard the tape recorder go into high pitched fast forward then he put the phone back in front of it and the line filled with the same static.

‘It still just sounds like static,’ I told him.

‘It’s Russian,’ he said. ‘Can’t you hear it?’

‘I guess I can hear Russian static,’ I told him.

‘Bah,’ he said, then something else in Russian, then, ‘You can’t hear it because endless capitalism has dulled your sense of the lateral and unorthodox.’

He could have been right. He told me I’d been listening to Sergey Petrov telling how he was killed and eaten by wolves during a particularly bad Siberian winter. He said the detail was astounding.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘next time you’re talking to one of these people could you ask if they go back to an infinite black void when they disappear up through the ceiling?’

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said, but I