I knew it was going downhill the moment we saw the Africans. Streaks of black draped in shorts to their ankles and t-shirts to their knees; they were a little too friendly for strangers, even if these strangers were getting high on hydroponic weed as the church bells of St. Mary's struck midnight on the 31st of December, 2007.
Nestled under a blanket of fig-trees in the middle of Hyde Park, oily vodka lubricating our spirits, the trumpet of fireworks thumped 'round the harbour and reverberated against dense technicolour clouds, light and sound dancing with the fresh steel and glass towers of Sydney's CBD. The delicate scent of a fleeting chaos wafted through the streets as the city staggered towards a new year, lured by the promise of a fresh start and still drunk on the success and the shame of the days left trailing in our wake.
As the cacophony peaked I wished Kieran a happy birthday, glad to share a smile in a friendship still recovering from The Katie Incident. When I moved to swap spit with Shyamla, Ophelia clumsily made her move on Kieran and insisted that a kiss was necessary to safely welcome 2008, a curiously unromantic scene to greet Ryan on return from 7/11, plastic bags loaded with plastic cups and soft-drinks to mix with hard liquor. The Africans must have seen this fuzzy-headed melee as the perfect opportunity to engage us, the initially pleasant exchanges carrying with them an aura of the awkwardness to come.
"I thought we'd never fucking escape".
They were stoned. We were drunk. It was never going to work out. I cradled my laptop bag against my chest like a newborn, praying that the hard drive was intact after the fall. Shyamla was still rattled after her increasingly bizarre exchange with Anonymous African #3, an odd chap obsessed with ensuring she not post her random snaps on the internet, for surely the folks back home would soon receive word of their once-praised son's shameless antics with the corrupt westerners, bringing the family into such disrepute that it would take generations to wash themselves of the indignity. While Ryan and Kieran hazily rummaged through high-school anecdotes, Ophelia offered softly scattered thoughts to the wind as though hoping one would grow wings and take flight towards coherency. Something about a rooftop party and a gay-friend on level 11.
The rooftop did not exist and apparently the gay was a friend no longer.
"What the fuck was that!?"
Glass shattered on the pavement and glares shot towards a third-story balcony. "Are you kidding? Someone's throwing shit out of the fucking window."
Oxford Street is what I imagine a level of Hell to look like. An endless stream of the homeless and the clueless, all legless and careless. Horrific on a random weekend, new year's eve turned the volume to eleven and spat in your face, the urban embodiment of Johnny Rotten on a bender. Vodka oozed through my blood, thickening my tongue and dulling my tact. This was 'me time', ego waxing and waning with my heart's beat, maudlin and magnificent and from the outside looking in just another fucked-up wannabe going down the drain. Amyl sniffers and cokeheads, 8-ballers and rock jockeys, we are all the same in the great gutter of life. A limp boy damp with sweat and frothing at the mouth is dragged from the same bar being used to launch bottles at the masses below, and as he shakes, rattles and rolls on the pavement beside us no one bats an eyelid and I continue to antagonize Shyamla for no reason other than that eerie fear that comes from liking someone. Kieran is talking to one of his girls and a couple of her friends, Ryan is attempting to have a D&M with my right ear and I'm aimlessly trying my best to bait Shyamla.
Spilling vodka and lemonade down her mini-skirt turned out to do the trick.
