The Invisible Man

The Invisible Man, Pages 18-24

I met Ameli in 1999. A single Mum and a breath of fresh air after the madness of the last five years. I was good friends with her sister and her sister's boyfriend. I asked them for an introduction, but they were both hesitant.

"Come on...set us up."

So they did...reluctantly. Many years later I thought about why they were so hesitant. Was it to protect her? Or perhaps to protect themselves (we did drugs, Em did not, and at that stage knew nothing of it). Then I became convinced that neither was true...they were trying to protect me.

Ameli and her family had emigrated from Germany when she was around eight or nine years old. It must have been tough, she spoke no English, and was sent straight to school, where she was teased and bullied by the other kids.

But not for long. She learned to push back, and one day one of her tormentors found herself on the receiving end of Ameli's rage, and the bullying stopped. At least it did for her, but people who are bullied often become bullies themselves, and so it was that if she could not get her way...well she made sure she did, no matter the cost.

We fell in love very quickly, and convenience was the foundation. We both had things the other needed. I wanted stability and a home life, she was a great cook and after my previous life where fast food, or not much food at all made do, I now sat in front of the best lasagne, spag bol, pork chops and mashed potato, and what she called Bratkatofein und eire (fried potato that has been previously boiled, separately fried bacon and onion then add the onion and bacon mix to the frying potato then serve with two fried eggs on top and heaps of tomato sauce) and I ate like a king.

Ameli has a son called Jordan. He was three to four years old when I first met him, and he hated me from the moment he laid eyes on me. Sharing his mum with this stranger was not to his liking, so I tried to make him see that I wasn't such a bad guy...even though I was.

On the first night I stayed over that he wasn't at his dad's place, we sat at the table eating dinner. Jordan didn't like vegetables, in fact, he didn't like to eat anything but dessert. But she made him eat a little of it first before he got his way.

So I came up with what I thought was a great solution. I looked over at his plate, he was flicking food around, hiding bits of the stuff he was told he had to eat under the stuff he didn't, when I said, "I'll eat that if you don't want it."

Well, that was a game-changer. There was no way he was going to share anything with this oversized man threat. So he tucked in and ate a few mouthfuls before asking Em if it was enough.

The only time he ever showed any love for me was when I was doing something for him or taking him somewhere.

"We come as a package deal, love me, love my son."

"Yes Em, but he is so hard to love."

"Deal with it."

The trouble was, when I dealt with it, neither of them liked it. I maintained my punishment (I never hit him until he was much older and pushed me hard enough to warrant it...not justified I know, but he really did go beyond my level of acceptable), and once his punishment was set, unlike his mum, it was not negotiable. It didn't take him long to find the chink in our armour, which he exploited to his advantage over the next fifteen years.

****

Em had never smoked a joint, let alone done hard drugs. Alcohol was her poison, so I went about things in my usual manner, tempting, corrupting, and laying down the foundation of creating a drug fiend. And eventually, she had a puff on my joint.

"Yes Neil (said in Dr Frankenstein's voice), create the monster."

"Come on up to the lab, and see what's on the slab." (Frank-N-Furter, Rocky Horror Picture Show).

"Three drops of essence of terror, five drops of sinister sauce." (Milton the Monster Show).

It didn't take long. Jordan was spending the weekend at his father's, we had booked a room at the Sunshine Coast and Ameli was about to try ecstasy for the first time.

We swallowed them (Mini Splits, high-quality high potency MDMA) and went up onto the balcony roof. A father, mother and a little girl walked past below. The little girl was wearing a poncho, and it had horizontal stripes in yellow and black and Em remarked that she looked like a little bumblebee....then her legs went numb, and her first real drug experience began.

****


When we first met, she was renting a house and her lease was coming up for renewal, so we moved in together, renting a property, before buying our first home together. The house we purchased was a small three-bedroom cottage, with a large yard, an established veggie garden, shrubs down both sides of the fence line and a huge gum tree that was over one hundred feet tall right smack in the middle of the back yard.

I loved that tree (and that house), even though it did throw a lot of branches down the hundred feet and onto the ground below, some large enough to kill anyone unlucky enough to be standing under it at the time. It provided shade, lots of birds used it as a watchtower and the previous owners had built a garden bed all around the base, that was well mulched and grew small shrubs (and later, other plants that I liked to smoke). We got a few chickens and Jordan went to school two hundred meters away...life was good...at least back then.

We both worked and saved despite the drug use, then one day she came to me and said, "You will never marry me will you?"

I had gotten through mt first forty years without making that commitment, and I couldn't see myself taking the plunge this late in the piece. I had to be sensitive, although getting married was to be avoided at all cost.

Then she said, "What about bumblebee, remember her?"

"Oh, that little girl up the coast."

"Wouldn't you love to have a little girl of your own?" she persisted.

I was of the persuasion that with the population of the earth increasing at such a rate that soon there wouldn't be any resources available to feed or sustain any of us, that I didn't want to contribute towards this certain disaster.

I explained this to her, but she was having none of it. And that's when she used one of the oldest tricks in the book....she began to cry. And when I saw those tears, well, I had to do something, I couldn't just let her suffer like that.

So I reluctantly agreed, and as quickly as those tears appeared, they were gone, and she went about planning our wedding. She couldn't wait to tell everyone of the news...me on the other hand thought, "What have I done?"

We were married in March 2005, and by May she was pregnant. Before she or I even had it confirmed, I looked at her and said, "Look at the size of your tits."

She looked down and said, "What?"

"They are fucking huge."

And so it was that we were going to be parents. I cannot say I was over the moon...at least not in the beginning. I began to contemplate what becoming a parent was going to entail, but nothing I could say or do was going to change this fact, so, I got with the program.

****

Money, money, money.....that was Em's want and her need. I had an industrial accident and received a lump sum payout of one hundred twenty thousand dollars. I gave her twenty thousand to buy herself a car, and I bought myself a motorcycle (of course)...a Ducati 1000ss.

The first month I went up to Mt Nebo. With a beautifully smooth, winding road that goes for about twenty kilometres. It was a favourite of the local motorcycle community, but also for local law enforcement, who, in the interests of 'Road Safety, every weekend would have the bikes lined up for their tickets...ring ring kahching kahching (the sound of money filling public sector coffers)

It was a beautiful day, and I made the ill-fated decision to go for a ride up Nebo. I came up behind an old Holden Commodore doing sixty kilometres per hour in an eighty-kilometre zone. Double white lines in the centre say do not cross, but I became impatient and gunned it...around the slowcoach and was on my merry way.

Then, in my rear vision mirror, up comes this same Commodore, going a lot faster than he had when he was holding me up. So, in my mind, he must be upset at me for passing him.

I looked again, and he was gaining on me fast. 1000cc of power and I was not waiting around to see what he was up to...down two gears and I was gone.

That afternoon a police car pulled up at our home. The officer asked me how fast I was riding on the mountain earlier in the day.

"Not that fast." I lied.

"We have video evidence of your bike riding carelessly, and if you wish to call Indooroopilly Traffic Monday morning you can view it for yourself."

Monday morning I made the call.

"Which one were you?" the cop asked (apparently I was not the only one to fall prey to their little scheme).

I told him red Ducati 1000 and my rego and he said, " Oh, you...our guy was doing one hundred fifty and you were pulling away from him fast, want to come in and look for yourself?"

No, I didn't....but the words entrapment and revenue-raising did come to mind when he offered me a deal he thought was generous.

"We will only do you for driving forty-five over...you're lucky."

Really... forty-five over still saw my licence gone, and a seven hundred fifty dollar fine.

So, the cover went on my brand new Duke, and I drove my pick-up to work on a suspended licence for the next three months... left-hand lane, never more than fifty-five and never less than fifty in a sixty zone. But eventually, the bike made its return.

****

Em and I showed up for the ultrasound appointment, so our baby could be measured to check on its progress and to tell if it was a boy or a girl. As the nurse was rotating the scanner around Em's ever-growing belly she stopped, turned to us and smiled. I had been watching the screen, looking for a head or a leg...anything that resembled a baby, but it all looked the same to me.

She placed the instrument against her stomach again, this time pointing out that which I could not see for myself.

"There, see the heart beating?" I did.

"Look, see the other one?"

Other one?

As the realisation of what she was saying hit us both she said, "Congratulations, you are having twin girls. And it looks as though they are going to be identical...only one placenta."

Well, it was only for the fact that she had on rubber gloves covered in glug that I didn't high five her. Em on the other hand didn't seem quite so enthused.

"Twins?" dejectedly.

"Yes ma'am, twins."

My smile as we walked out of the practice was enormous.

"I got good stuff hey?"

She hosed down my joy with, "Twins run on my side, and it is the woman who determines it, not the man."

I didn't care who was responsible, I was going to be the proud father of identical twin girls.

Not long after we got home she said, "This house will not hold three kids and us."

What? My beautiful little house that we almost own...my huge gum tree.

"What are you saying?"

We had been in that house five years, and at the measly price of ninety-five thousand dollars, my dream was to pay it off, then semi-retire...tending to the gardens, growing pot in the back yard right under my gum tree...a dream that was now going to be just a memory.

****

Our neighbour behind us was Craig, and he was a cabinetmaker by trade. He and his wife were both great people, and the best neighbours you could hope for. We had jointly paid for and built a six-foot-high Colourbond fence. It's nice to have nice neighbours, but it is also nice to have a high fence between you...especially when I had several five to six-foot cannabis plants growing meters away.

One day he told me over the fence that he had joined the police and was going into the academy soon to train for a year. I came to the conclusion that this was both good and bad news.

The good news was we had that fence, and the huge gum tree to hide my marijuana plants. The bad news was I was to have a cop living close enough to smell them once they reached maturity.

A year later I had come home from work, and was having my obligatory bong at the back door when there was a knock at the front door...a loud knock...a coppers knock...followed by "It's the police, put away your drugs."

Holy fuck! After a minute to allow the smell to clear I went to the door and there, in his brand new uniform, was my neighbour. I congratulated him, we chatted for a bit and he left. I should have known it wasn't a raid, because what sort of cop would tell me to put my drugs away before kicking my door down.

We had a mutual friend who also rode a motorbike. One day my neighbour was on a job. There was a toilet block in a park that was being used as a beat (a place gay men would meet for casual sex) and some of the locals had made complaints.

So, a few cops, my neighbour included, in plain clothes, were kicking a ball around nearby waiting to see if any unsavoury types showed up. My neighbour decided to play a prank on one of his fellow officers by calling our mutual friend and telling him to come to the area, act suspiciously, and walk into the toilets.

Once he arrived and performed his role in the joke, the cops said to their mate to go in and check him out. He entered the toilet block and our friend put the hard word on him. Then, all hell broke loose and all the cops had to come running in to stop the cop from bashing our friend, telling him it was all a joke.

****

My little house was put on the market and sold in a matter of days for two hundred twenty-five thousand dollars. We had made twenty-five thousand dollars a year, every year for five years we lived there, in capital gain, with minimal improvements.

We got lucky and purchased at just the right time, and unfortunately, those kinds of returns just don't happen any more. We then purchased a large four-bedroom home on a quarter acre block. It was a beautiful house, but it was not my little cottage, and there were dark clouds on our horizon.

****

Because of Em's age (mid-thirties), it was recommended that an Amnio be performed. A long needle is pushed into the amniotic sack, so a small amount of fluid can be drawn and tested for downs syndrome. We were apprehensive, but we felt some pressure to do this.

"It will be fine." the nurse told us when we arrived at the hospital for the procedure.

In the waiting room, I held Em's hand. We were both thinking the same thing...that the chance of our babies having DS was one in one thousand, and the chance of miscarriage because of the procedure was one in one hundred. And I had already had a vasectomy, so there were no more chances of making more (which was my plan and why I rushed to get it after she fell pregnant)

Before they were due to prep her, the doctor came to speak with us. He had such a poor attitude towards our concerns, dismissing them and did nothing calm us or the situation at all.

He left to go prep and we looked at each other and I said, "Fuck this, let's go!" and she agreed in an instant. We left without saying a word. Without a doubt, the best decision we ever made together.


****

I will never blame anyone for my failings, and my addiction to drugs has not just affected me, but all of my past relationships as well. I own what I did, and you would think that having children would be the catalyst for change. And I wish I could write that it was...but the truth is, I just kept on using.

I am ashamed of a lot of the things we did, both of us. Em would never admit this, and I don't blame her. But this book for me is about truth and accountability, not the shirking of things we (well me anyway) must face.

One day I had scored five pills...Ecstasy. They were Doves, very strong and high quality (and lucky for all four of us they were) pure MDMA. Em was about six months pregnant and had gone out. I had taken two before she came home, foolishly thinking I could hide it from her. When she came home, I was wasted. She went rank at me, and in my state, I tried to deny it, but she was having none of it.

She kept at me over and over...asking me if I had more. I held out, but eventually, I broke down and admitted that I had two left, thinking if I gave her two she would flush them and I would still have one left. So, I handed them over and she went to flush them...or so I thought...she came back a few minutes later and I said sorry again, but she seemed not so angry at me.

I looked at her and said, "You fucking didn't?"

But she had. With no concerns for our babies, we had exposed them to a drug that could very well have killed them or cause them to be deformed. I am ashamed of what we did that night. Once I knew what she had done....well, it had gotten her off my back. We peaked for a few hours, then I prayed that our girls would be OK, and we were so fortunate that they were.

****

Em and I had been invited to a wedding at Caloundra, on the Sunshine Coast. We booked a hotel room for the night, and the wedding was fantastic. At our table, there was a guy named Lance, and Em and Lance hit it off. She preferred male friends to female, so this to me was nothing unusual.

Over the following months, unbeknown to me, they had been talking...a lot. They had shared interests. Lance had a son about the same age as Jordan and was having trouble gaining access to him because of divorce and all that entails.

Around this same time, I noticed a change in her behaviour. Instead of coming to bed with me, she always had to sit up late, checking her Facebook status, and whatever else she was doing. I started work early in the morning, so by the time she came to bed I was asleep. Sex became non-existent. I would ask if there was a problem and get shot down for pressuring her. Another tactic was the old 'pick a fight just before bed' trick. She had fallen out of love with me.

"Are you still in love with me Em?"

"I'm in love with the idea of being in love with you."

WTF...who says that.

We took the girls up the coast for a holiday, and as we approached Caloundra, Em turned to the girls and said, "We haven't been up here since we came to visit Lance."

Immediately, I saw her stop.

"So, when did you come to visit Lance? I asked. "You didn't tell me about it."

"Oh, it was ages ago. We met him at the beach and just spent a few hours there."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"It's no big deal." Downplaying the whole thing without conviction.

But, it was for me. If she had told me she was going up to the beach and catching up with Lance while she was there, I wouldn't have thought twice about it...I trusted her. But to hide something like that, made me suspicious. So I pushed her further.

"Why would you not tell me?"

Her defences were up now. "Because I knew you would carry on about it...like you are now."

"Hang on a minute, going to visit a guy you are friends with is completely different from lying about it."

"I just forgot to tell you, we only went to the beach. What? Do you think there is something going on between us?"

I didn't, so I dropped it.

About a year later she got a text from Lance one night, and it said, "Goodbye sweetheart."

He was found dead in his apartment, having committed suicide. When she told me, I had no sympathy whatsoever for him...or for her.

Looking back perhaps it was wrong, but I blamed her partially for what happened. She was never going to leave me for him. He had no job, and she had commitments coming out of her ears. No doubt he had other problems, but the fact that she was the last person he contacted before pulling the plug indicated to me more than just a casual friendship.

Sometime after, we were watching the news on TV and a story came on. I don't remember what it was about, but I do remember her comment to the girls. The vision showed a block of flats where something had happened, and she mustn't have realised that thousands of blocks of flats all look the same from the front.

She said, "Look girls, that looks just like Lance's place."

I looked at her and asked how the fuck she knew what Lance's place looked like. And, as was the norm from around this time on, I got no real answer, and he was dead...and dead men tell no tales.

****

"Why don't you kill yourself? Your useless...and the girls and I will be better off without you."

I looked at her, astonished...was this some sick joke. Then, she showed me the shoebox full of pain medication she had brought home from her parent's house. I had suffered from mental illness for years, thoughts of suicide came to me now and again, especially when I was stressed.

She put the box in our walk-in robe, leaving them there for me and returned to reiterate.

Then, I didn't just say this, I decided it, "Fuck you!"

And from that day forward, I never again thought of ending my life. And so, by trying to get rid of me, gaining my superannuation (401K), life insurance, all of our savings, my Ducati, the house (shit, I was worth way more dead than alive to her), she actually saved my life.

****

Em hated Meth. But for someone who hated it so much, she was willing to do just about anything to get it. I had a baggy, and in it were around two or three points (about a third of a gram)...and she wanted it.

I held it in my right hand, and she demanded I give it to her.

"Like fuck." I said matter of factly.

So, she went for my hand, trying to pry my fingers open one at a time. Of course, this was impossible. When it came to my drugs, a superhuman strength took over...like a mother lifting a car of her child.

I laughed at her efforts, and so she went to the next level and bit down on my wrist. She obviously wanted that bag a lot, but my resolve was to not give in. I laughed again, so she doubled down, biting even harder.

The reality was, she would have needed to amputate my arm in order to get that tiny bag of drugs from me, after all, it was all I had left. I have a high pain threshold, but this was getting ridiculous.

I had to think of something, and fast, so I said, "You do know I am Hep C positive?"

As blood began to trickle down my arm she let go, and immediately I ran for the bedroom. As I rounded the corner, I reached into my pocket and replaced the bag with the Meth for an empty one I had finished earlier. She was hot on my tail, and I kept going into the on-suite, giving her just enough time to see me throw the empty bag into the toilet and flush it down.

I told her, "Drugs always cause us problems, that's what I think of them."

"You fucking idiot!"

Well, that was true...never a truer word has been spoken. But later, as I got that bag out, I felt like the smartest idiot in the world.