ACG Rants

• Madi
  • Growing Old
  • Kirsty McColl
  • The good old fscking days
• David W
  • Trainspotting
• Neef
  • Whats wrong with goths, goth clubs, and goth music today
  • From Deep Vein Thrombosis to Deborah Sutton
  • Sandro
  • Boycott PVC
• Sandro
  • Red velvet lines the black box, the Punter's is dead
  • My Pet Lev
• D.A.P
  • Get a real one
• Barbarella
  • The Eighties
  • vidi vici vini
• n4cat
  • I'm Me
• Loom
  • In My Day....

ACG

• The aus.culture.gothic FAQ.
• The ACG Short Story Collection - SubPlots
• 1998 ACG Show and Tell compilation.
• 1999 ACG Show and Tell compilation
• 2001 ACG Show and Tell compilation
• Classic ACG Quotes
• Vurt.net

From December 1998, by David W

TRAINSPOTTING

Interesting train ride home last night...

An old man was playing "Waltzing Matilda" on a violin. Badly. I was tired. The music grated. I swapped carriages at the next stop.

This carriage had a guy with a bad tattoo and a footy vest who picked his nose continuously. Nothing I couldn't ignore. I sat down, and tried to get some sleep.

A trio of aging bogans got on, two men and a woman. One of the men, the one with long shaggy hair and dark sunglasses, was missing half his right arm.

They sat down opposite me. My eyes were closed, but I could hear the bogan woman berating the woman sitting next to me.

"You alright, love? Dontcha know it's rude to stare. Jeez, some people have got no manners..."

Standard bogan bullshit, I thought.

Then I heard them making some kind of deal with the nose-picker. "Twelve bucks. I'm not going to rip you off."

Uh-huh. I opened my eyes. They were exchanging tiny little plastic ziplock bags. I could see something lumpy inside, but couldn't quite make it out.

The armless bogan, the one with the sunglasses and the hair, was suspiciously silent, unnaturally still. The nose-picker was the first to notice.

"Hey mate, you okay?"

No. He wasn't. His lips were turning blue.

They shook him, yelled at him to wake up. For one horrible moment I was sharing a train with a corpse.

Then he raised his head, impossibly slowly.

"Wha...?"

They laughed nervously, urged him to stick his head out the window and take deep breaths. In through the nostrils, out through the mouth. That's it. You're okay now. Just stay awake, keep breathing. Fuck, that was close.

More nervous laughter, excited chatter. They exchanged names with the nose-picker, comrades in their brush with death. Thought we lost you you there, mate. Still, bit of excitement, ey?

I got off at my station, feeling sick.

There has been something of a flame war going on in aus.games.roleplaying. Morgan has been defending his right to write games about junkies. And I have been backing him.

But I hope you'll forgive me, Morgan, if I don't play your game. I remember the glut of books about heroin after "Trainspotting" took off. It bored me sick.

I *hate* junkies.

Fuck their animal-eyed need. Fuck their chemical slavery. Fuck OD's in alleyways. Fuck dirty needles in playgrounds. Fuck burglaries and robberies with syringes full of blood. Fuck millions of dollars flooding the pockets of international murderers and criminals.

And fuck "drug porn", as Will Self called it. Fuck instant-streetcred-just-add-junk. Fuck William Burroughs in his suit and Ewan McGregor in his sweat-face make-up. Fuck "Dogs In Space". Fuck beautiful songs about dirty needles, "Heroin" and "Bad" and "Hurt". Fuck the sly nod, the mischievous wink. Fuck "heroin's bad, okay... but isn't it *exciting* too?"

Because it isn't. It's repetitive and boring and false. There's nothing romantic about junk, nothing noble or beautiful or even particularly interesting. There's just some dirty, wrinkled junkie almost dying on a train.

"Thought we lost you there, mate. Still, bit of excitement, ey?"

</rant >