Lessons Learnt

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sad baby crying in mums arms black and white image caravan

- A chapter from Under the Influence, Reclaiming my Childhood -

All parents want to teach their children the ways of the world. Guide them through the ambiguities of life showing them with a soft and gentle hand, the lessons that they learnt the hard way. Parents will say things like ‘be careful crossing the road’, ‘remember to say please and thank you’ and ‘follow your dreams’ with the hope that their young will heed their advice. Doing so will hopefully result in their child having the skills to successfully navigate their way through life in a much more secure and painless way. To his credit, Dad was no exception, he did teach me some things. 

He taught me how to fight. When I was quite young, I had a bullying issue. In the beginning it wasn’t too serious, just some posturing and the occasional threat. However, over time the threats became real and it often turned physical. To make matters worse the other kids were starting to join in. Once I summoned the courage and told Dad about it, he was visibly saddened. He pulled me aside and showed me how to hold myself in a fight. Told me how to clench my fists, put my guard up and how to throw a punch.

I would like to say that the bully didn’t know what hit him, but he did. It was my right fist, square on his jaw. I knocked him off his feet onto the ground and just walked away. From then on, all it took was an aggressive look in his direction to get him to back down. I have never really had a problem with bullying since. I learnt that if you look crazy enough, people will typically leave you alone.

He taught me the joys of the outdoors and a love of nature. Most of my happy memories from childhood come from our camping adventures. Dad was an avid naturalist. His knowledge of plant life and nature was outstanding. Walking in the bush with him was quite an experience, he could look at any plant and tell you all about it, how it reproduced and other interesting facts. One that has stuck with me to this day was about the Banksia plant which only releases its seeds in response to fire. He would talk about the issues of back burning to protect houses contrasted with the ‘natural order’ of nature; which fire was a pivotal part of. He would concede that yes it was destructive, but it also cleared the way for new life.

Being the avid gardener that he was, I was often outdoors beside him repotting seedlings, transplanting cactuses and learning about the best ways to maintain a worm farm. The love of nature extended to a variety of outdoor activities. There truly is something magical about camping in a secluded area with nothing to disturb you. With no noises to be heard other than the rustling of the trees in the wind, the crackle of a fire and the flow of a nearby river over rocks. You don’t know peace until you have experienced that.

However, the most profound learning often comes not from what is said to a child, but from what they see and feel. The day to day interactions, events and ‘norms’ of family life will often have significantly more impact on the child then the planned lessons that the parents give to their children. I have a feeling that Dad taught me a lot more then he intended to.

I learnt how to grow marijuana plants under UV lights. I learnt the best way to fit five times the amount of furniture into a room than would typically fit. I learnt that all of your friends will eventually rob you. I learnt how to use a bong. I learnt where the spare crowbar was just in case I needed it to defend myself. I learnt some people enjoy weed so much that they will use it as seasoning on their salads. I learnt that everyone is addicted to something. I learnt to be vigilant in my attempts to avoid touching used needles. I learnt that a locked bathroom was a place of safety and I learnt to wake at the quietest sound.

Sadly, I learnt that the movies are wrong. I learnt that drug fuelled parties are not always what they are cracked up to be and that the first time you see a naked lady may not be a pleasant or exciting experience. Rather it can be quite disturbing.

I was quite young at the time, perhaps thirteen years old. Being the shy kid that I was, the thought of a girlfriend was quite a daunting one. I would speak to girls my age quite easily, but would become nervous when it came to anything more than friendship. More than once, I am embarrassed to say, I left the spin the bottle circle to do something ‘better’. Sadly, this trend of passing up opportunities to develop a relationship with the opposite sex continued well into my late teens.

So I was at my dad’s house one night after school, and as usual he was very high. Only this time he was having a party, I can’t quite recall the reason, but any excuse to get stoned would suffice. Weed and alcohol filled the air, with pills and needles being shoved into bodies all around. Sounds great right? With music playing and some food about, everyone is sure to be having a good time!

I have seen many movies in which they depict rampant drug use like it is a fun and adventurous thing. Whilst the people on the drugs may freak out or go crazy, it is all in good fun. They recover the next day a little worse for wear, perhaps with a penis painted on their cheek. The audience laughs and everyone moves on. The next day you get the slapstick humour derived from the suffering of a hangover, vomiting and nausea. Hilarious.

I’m sure those kind of parties exist; however, my reality was significantly different. Picture yourself sitting next to your younger brother watching TV and waiting for dinner. You are just expecting a normal night of watching TV and being ignored for the most part by your father who, as usual, would progressively get more and more stoned as the night went on. Towards the end of the night, you would somehow manage to get the younger sibling into bed and then would try and sleep yourself, hoping not to be woken throughout the night by people knocking on the window.

However tonight is different. The place is a mess with rubbish and trash everywhere, and as always there is no room to move around due to the immense amounts of furniture clogging up the living space. The house smells of stale food, vomit and shit. Then the first guests arrive. They stumble through the door exclaiming:

“Heyyyyy, mate howww are you going? Long-time ay?”

At least that is what you think they are saying, they are already way beyond wasted as they come through the door. As each one comes inside you get more and more concerned with what may happen. They all look, act and smell the same. Like Dad, but worse.

What’s more, they come bearing gifts, most people bring a variety of narcotics, enough to share. Whilst alcohol and weed are the most prevalent intoxicants, it is not uncommon to see pills or needles being passed around. As the night progresses, they become more and more incoherent, rambling incomprehensibly with significant mood swings and sudden impassioned outbursts.

They are all like that one drunk uncle you had to talk to when you were little. You know that one guy that became a bit too tipsy at family gatherings and proceeded to talk at you very loudly about some utter nonsense. The one that you were too afraid to walk away from or tell them to leave you alone because they seemed quite emotionally volatile. Imagine a room full of these people and only these people. No matter where you turn or where you go, you can’t escape, they are everywhere. Yelling at you, beckoning you to come to them, talking and swearing. Getting higher and higher. The sole safe person to turn to is the stranger that is passed out in the corner. So you take a seat by him and wait.

Seeing a group of adults get more and more out of control and feeling helpless is one of the worst experiences ever. There is nothing like leaving one room in fear, only to return to that room moments later because there are many more terrifying things happening in the room next door. Suffice to say, talking to someone who is merely drinking and smoking seems quite substantially safer than being in the room with the people shooting up and passing the needle around. 

It’s hard to adequately describe the average person at one of these events, other than it was like they were not present. Looking into their eyes, you saw only blankness and despair, like a void that couldn’t be filled. They were never quite with it, so you couldn’t really tell if they were hearing you or not. They would be constantly looking off on angles rather than directly at you and seemed quite agitated and edgy. Their movements were slow and deliberate interposed with sudden erratic gesticulations making them seem always off balance.

From an external sober perspective, the conversations did not flow in the slightest. They would all be simultaneously talking about different topics, changing themes mid-sentence and stopping halfway through words. Yet miraculously, they somehow all managed to believe that they were effectively communicating with each other. In fact, they seemed to very much enjoy each other’s company and would bask in the conversations they shared.

Perhaps when you take that many drugs for that amount of time, you develop the psychic power to be able to have ten separate conversations at once with three different people and somehow be able to make sense of it all. Ranging from philosophy, to issues of morality, to sporting accomplishments of their favourite teams as well as work prospects and other profound observations on the human condition - they discussed it all. Who am I kidding, the main thing they discussed was how high they were, how high they are going to get, other times they were high and their favourite:

“Where to get the good shit.”

Often, as the night progressed, the concoction of drugs kicked in and the clothes started coming off, hands and lips started going places, and people moved closer to each other. Which leads me to my first experience of a naked lady.

I am not sure what most young boys imagined their first experience of seeing a real naked lady would be, but I gather it was not this. Leanne was a five foot six, slightly obese, middle aged woman. Her hair is blond with significant grey regrowth; she has it styled in small greasy ringlets hanging off to one side and the numerous split ends suggest that she has not washed it in weeks.

She is wearing heavy and trashy make up, that by the look of it seems to be days old. It is as if she has applied layer upon layer of foundation and eye shadow on top of itself without removing any in-between. Her skin has well and truly aged beyond her years, hanging off her face like an ungainly horror mask. It matches her teeth, the ones that remain that is, which are stained and discoloured.

Her eyes are glazed over and are quite bloodshot. With one eye fixed forward whilst the other gazes off to the side. Rather than quickly moving her eyes to look at you, she would slowly turn her whole face towards you, thus ensuring that she has aligned her good eye so that it is staring directly at you. All down both arms and legs are what look like bruises, interlaced with small holes in her skin.

She is however dressed to impress, that night she donned a short mini skirt, which would make even the most exuberant young party goer shy away in embarrassment. Up top she wore a skin tight halter neck shirt that revealed most of her back. She was of course shoeless. And just like everyone else at the party she bore the overpowering musk of body odour, tobacco, weed and alcohol.

So there I was, sitting in the lounge room, attempting to feign enough interest in the current TV program to dissuade the stoned gentleman to my right from talking with me anymore. I figured if I just did the old:

“Yes, oh okay, oh yeah, mmmmm.”

And kept averting my eyes to the TV he would eventually get the hint. I couldn’t be too overtly rude to him however as I did not want to anger him. After roughly fifteen minutes of this game, I heard a loud ruckus and look up at the door to the lounge room. Leanne is standing there, topless and turning around. To the disbelief of everyone in the room she is also in the process of taking her underpants off. Welcome to adulthood.

Her breasts hung low with her large erect nipples pointing at the ground. Extensive stretch marks reached all around her side from her armpits to the base of her drooping bosoms. Her stomach fat rolled onto itself and was covered in small brown hairs which proceeded to get more numerous as they joined into her pubic hair, which itself was wild and unkempt.

I stared frozen in shock as her red lacy underpants quickly came off, releasing her cramped caboose enough that it dropped a couple of inches. Speaking of which, it too was covered in cellulite and more stretch marks. When she turned to face in my direction, I couldn’t help but wonder if all women were as hairy as she was downstairs. It seemed like you could have braided it with ease.

The room went silent, even the stoned people having ten conversations at once stopped to look. She entered the room and beckoned to somebody in the corner. The guy promptly jumped up and whilst slapping her hard on her exposed droopy ass he embraced her passionately. She then turned and led him into a room down the hallway. My room. The noises that followed informed us all of what was happening inside. Lucky lucky man.

So there I was, shocked with nowhere to run or hide. I sat silently for a while until Dad entered the room. Seeing the pale expression on my face he offered some words of comfort:

“Don’t worry son, they are not all like that.”

I was so shocked that I stayed silent, and he left without saying another word. I should have responded with:

“Hahaha, oh God I hope not. Did you see her? If they are all like that I have dire hopes for the human species.”

But I was thirteen and it was my first experience seeing a naked lady, what was I to know? Porn and later girlfriends soon corrected my initial experience, however it was a tumultuous few years there of significant uncertainty pertaining to the female form. On a positive note, I learnt that if your first experience is as bad as mine was you can only really go up from there.

Despite everything, the most poignant lesson of all that my dad taught me was to fear addiction. To this day I can’t enjoy much of anything without having a significant fear of substance dependency rising in the back of my mind. I am worried about my own addictive tendencies; I find myself questioning why I am consuming the substance rather than just enjoying it. Whilst this will definitely keep me out of trouble in the long run, it is horribly restrictive amongst friends or at any social event. I will often find myself unintentionally pacing the room, internally repeating the mantra of:

“I can’t get addicted, I won’t be like him.”

Clearly this internal mood is not congruent to a fun social experience, so when it occurs I have to excuse myself for a while to clear my head. Initially I would try to push it aside, but this just made it worse. Besides it is hard to push something aside whilst you are simultaneously trying to prove it right. I remember looking at my pathetically passed out or intoxicated father and knowing that I would never become a slave to addiction as he had. At one stage I was tempted to take up tobacco cigarettes, and then to quit just to prove to myself that I am stronger then he was. Thankfully I had the sense not to even begin.

At weddings or over dinner, I will often refuse the drinks on offer because I don’t see the point of social drinking, as I feel that it will only embed a habit that I can’t afford to have. When I do drink, I am filled with anxiety and concern that I will become an alcoholic. The same is true even of food. Therefore, I often won’t consume anything remotely addictive. If I do, I make sure to keep a record of how often I am taking it, so I can keep track of my usage so as to not let it get out of hand. One of my greatest fears is to become my father, primarily by becoming dependant on a substance and then subsequently neglecting my children.

Sadly, the most important lesson Dad taught me was what not to do in life. In almost every way possible my dad was a sorry excuse for a human being and a woefully bad father. Sometimes I joke about it, because I know that no matter what goes wrong in my life, no matter how badly I mess up and regardless of what I do I still won’t be at his level of aberration.

One of my major life goals is to never become him, and more importantly, never bring children into a world where somebody like him is raising them. I couldn’t bear the thought of my children looking at me the way I looked at him.