Wet Roads and getting nearer

We planned to drive from Byron Bay to Nimbin.

I never thought my first time it go to the 'alternative-lifestyle' capital was with my Mum. Stiff shit.

On the way, it continuted to rain down on gorgeous, lush countryside....I started to paint the picture of Nimbin for Mum.

"I knew a woman from around Lismoe, she was a dyke, she had facial hair and she never shaved. She used to wear bows in it and performed in a circus as a kind of bearded lady come acrobat"

Mum laughed. "Sounds like an interesting lady"

"Yeah and once an actor from Home and Away to Nimbin. He'd gone there to be a hippy, but he dressed all wrong - like some kind of bad 60s cliche. The locals laughed at him, he got back in his car, drove back to Sydney and never returned. Real hippes are filthy, feral, lice-ridden - its disgusting and you have to respect that a real hippie is a real hippie, not some fucking city try-hard."

Of course I thought the whole problem with the hippie movement was more complex than that. Where I'd grown-up in Victoria was not unlike Byron Bay. The only vestage of alternative life were the hippies who lived in a depressed, public housing area called "Cockatoo". They lived in tee-pees, in places with no rooves, with Mums who got more stoned that they did and then left their 14 year olds alone for months at a time while they travelled the countryside "on a journey". It had given me a taste of life beyond the bland, conservative, aspiring middle class house I grew up and at the same time left me, like some kids of hippies as cynical as ever about whether or not the "alternative" was ever better than the "mainstream".

There was always a gap between the rhetoric and action. One girl I knew who was in her early 20s used to go on about 'tarot' and 'intuition' and 'past lives'. She dressed earthy and thought she was princess Nature incarnate. She was actually a selfish cunt - giving up her two small children to her violent-ex and spent most of her time with a sugar daddy. She feel pregnant to some young goth guy and miscarried at a dance party, on drugs on the dancefloor. Her friend, who also believed she was 'caring' and 'free' and 'mother of all children' protested when Renee came up to her at the dance party.

"Amber I want to go home, I think Ive had a miscarriage"
"Oh Renee, please, cant we just stay for another hour...the musics getting good and Ive just had another pill"

Often, 'freedom' just means free to do what you want without considering others.

Another girl I knew thought she was so perfect she might just float away from her spiritual body and become pure-spirit. She took ACID when she was pregnant and her baby was born with deformed feet. The crystals just couldnt heal that one. Ive seen hippie girls bitch at each other in a way that make the POPULAR GIRLS cringe. Ive seen a lesbian couple with dreadlocks beat the shit out of a random stranger, a hippie guy rob houses and snatch purses off unsuspecting old women to feed their habit. Ive also never understood why eating organic food is important when your just going to pump your body full of drugs and why its ok to have dance parties in the middle of the bush just to fuck the environment up that little bit more. Many of the kids of hippies I knew grew-up and got massive mortgages and called their kids things like "Mercedes". They wanted to get out of the glorified poverty trap and now they are some of the most materialistic people Ive ever met.

Like the gay world, the 'alternative' world suffers from a lack of values and strict sense of conformity to ideals like 'vegetarianism'. At times, both worlds can be as intolerant of difference at the mainstream world from which they rebel.

We drove past a sign that pointed Ballina one way and Lismore the other. Matt, the 18 year old ex-Versace Model with a Narcisstic Personality Disorder, came from Ballina. I felt a little twinge in my stomach we turned the opposite direction. It was slightly liberating.

Part of me also wanted to go there. What if Matt just happened to be visting for Christmas? So what I nearly beat the shit out of him last time I saw him...Ive got charisma, Ive been working out.

I put HIS song on.


"Marina Gasolina....meet u after school and Ill beat u like Gorilla" (wank u off)

He sang it to me a few times. Marina Gasolina was a reference to a type of woman in Brazil who only dated guys if they owned a car. Ha. I suspected Matt had been cheating on me with a guy who lived in a penthouse and drove a porsche.

I played HIS other song.

'When I go out some like to get my drunk and wild.
But the only thing you'll get tonight is my fucking drunk tab.
Yeah Im like this hot chick that you cant even touch'

He used to say that song was about him.

Wanker.

I pined for him quietly.

When we got into Lismore it was deserted. The town was flooded. The roads to Nimbin were all cut off. A car was submerged, so was a van, a mini golf course and half a pub. Street signs were completely covered. A brown snake swam through what was once road. We stopped and took photos. Later that day I learned that someone further North had been killed in the flooding.

We werent going to Nimbin. We went back to Brisbane via Ballina. Which was dumpy, unsophisticated, out of the way. It made a big fat lie out of Matt's sexy, smooth, urbane facade. I wanted to call him and tell him I understand why he was such a dickhead now. I really only wanted to so I could hear his voice. Any boy's voice.

I slept in the car most of the way back to Brisbane. I was excited to be back. I could go out, find another Matt.

We stayed in the Valley. I walked around, it was busy, hot and humid. Aboriginals sat with horrible meth-addict bitches, there were tourists, hipsters, emos, fags. I saw a celebrity drag queen out of costume and like most celebrity drag-queens looked much better dressed as a girl

I walked around the few blocks that make up the valley and heard fragments of people's conversation.

"Do u know how much they charge me for that advice?"

"Im fucking smashed already, man"

"She reckons she used to be a prostitute, I never...."

None of this makes any fucking sense I thought. It was utterly pointless, all of it. I was ready to get lost in the madness and the meaninglessness. I was ready to go out.

There was a nice carpark waiting for me.