First Contact is a multidimensional narrative connecting centuries, continents and sub/cultures, unravelling coincidences and conspiracies, computer viruses, and viruses which infect your mind. It details a kaleidoscope of revolutions and counter re...
There didn't appear to be anything wrong with him when I found him, apart that he was lying motionless on the toilet floor in a shallow pool. He must be paralytic, I thought at first, agonizing at the stain in his Jag shirt and Country Road jeans which would be the consequence. He looked young, 20 at the oldest, fairly tall, slim, with short brown hair: a typical patron of the club. When he hadn't moved after a minute of observation I became concerned. I knelt over him pausing to note his exquisite ethnic necklace, realized he wasn't breathing. The impact was immediate.
Yothu Yindi's Treaty expanded into a few moments of painful cacophony and then retreated. Someone had come in behind me and obviously now regretted it. I couldn't say a word as he paced to the body, paled, theorized about foul play. Like me, he ended up standing mesmerized, mumbling softly: <<Fuck, who is this guy?>>
After a while a crowd began accumulating in the Men's Room as each visitor, no doubt on an innocent journey to the trough, or possibly just looking for a lost friend, became trapped by the spectacle on the floor. At one stage someone said <<Nobody touch his boots!>> and I understood that they were Doc Martins, a bold alternative statement compared with more mainstream Jag shirt and Country Road jeans. More puzzling, the sprawl of his legs revealed a pair of Nike socks, a ghastly white on white.
<<What happened here?>> asked the 30th person into the toilets, curiously a woman. <<This guy's a walking contradiction.>>
<<Either that or he>> someone else chipped in <<dresses in the dark.>> The toilet was your standard early 1990s advertising hell: posters in gaudy colors selling all kinds of wares from ribbed condoms to love scents engineered from the pheromones of endangered species. <<Hey look>> the aforementioned woman said. <<There's a mark on his wrist. It's too clean to be a tattoo.>>
<<It looks like a logo. A whirlpool of some kind.>>
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<<Is there a club in town with a stamp like that?>>
As I teetered forward for a final look before making way for the police, I was intrigued by one strange detail. He was wearing Hedione #5 cologne, the latest Glam concoction. Its fruity, transcendent aroma mixed with the earthier stench of cigarette smoke and piss to produce a profoundly discordant comment. FUCK, WHO IS THIS GUY?
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"Party on the dugout on Dixon Avenue
Haven't been to a jam in quite a while
Figure I'll catch up on the latest styles instead..."
IT WAS CURBURRA AVENUE in fact, but the sentiment was the same: I was looking forward to a decadent blowout. The bungalow was comfortably set in Yabbini, one of the Boulah Ring's shadier suburbs, and was really pumping when I arrived. Two days had passed since my encounter with the dead body, about eight nightmares or a thousand resolutions to forget it. Pondering the meaning of life was getting me nowhere: it was time to seek the solace of intoxication, hard music and even harder women.
