The Speechwriter by Martin McKenzie-Murray (latest books to read .TXT) 📗

In my experience, marijuana doesn’t care for your expectations of it. It’s a psychic bloodhound: it sniffs out the roots of your mental disorder, then rips them from the earth. But when I was younger, there were fewer roots to expose. When I smoked, I giggled and rhapsodised. I dove into music like pools of sunlit caramel. I played Simon and Garfunkel, and sat at their feet in a state of blissful piety. In these moments, I could believe that dope was deliciously enhancing my innocence.

So on my balcony that evening, I decided to renew my old optimism in weed. I rolled a spliff. As I inhaled, I stared hopefully at the ember. As I exhaled, I fixed my attention upon a geranium with a solitary flower. Perhaps I could find renewal this way.

I was wrong to think this. Very wrong. Those days were gone. As the literal darkness assumed some heavy metaphorical properties, I stared at the flower for equilibrium. ‘Relax,’ I told myself, ‘and absorb its innocence.’

I tried — but trying was the problem. Plus, I was distracted by HMAS Fear, which I could see approaching from the horizon.

‘Look at the flower,’ I reminded myself.

‘I’m already looking at it.’

‘If you’re talking back to me, then you’re not properly looking at it.’

‘I’m not sure what you want from me. I’m looking.’

‘Looking is just the start, I want you to really look at it.’

‘You want me to really look at it?’

‘Yes.’

‘What the fuck is that — really looking at it?’

‘Am I speaking in tongues? I want you to really look at it.’

‘You keep emphasising the word “really” like that fucking explains everything.’

‘You just don’t get it.’

One reason I didn’t get it was that HMAS Fear had now berthed in my harbour. Which meant the ship’s captain was nearby. The Hound. Counterintuitively, perhaps, The Hound is a young and voluble Californian surfer. Sun-bleached and salt-matted hair. Faded T-shirt, hemp shorts, aged sandals. Aviator sunnies. Seems harmless, right? He’s not. He’s an agent for weird and blistering truths. And here he was on my shore. The motherfucking Hound.

Brother, did you hear the Shadow Justice Minister this morning? Says necrophilia is the end game of the Commies. That’s right, my man. Says his esteemed counterpart wants to exhume David Birnie and make him his gay zombie lover. Got himself a bus with their faces on it — smooching, man — and he’s gonna personally drive that thing ’round the country.

This was actually true.

My dude, I’m not a political man like yourself, but your ‘marketplace of ideas’ is just fucking toilet graffiti. You’re redundant, man. Your country doesn’t care about speeches. Hasn’t for a long time. It cares about messages, man. And they don’t belong to writers anymore. They belong to advertising guys. And the Blue Bird and Zuckerberg. And the Gut and the Id. You dig? I like you, man, but you’re sticky as a motherfucker with fantasy. The world ain’t got no interest in your talent. You trying to bend the world around you, but the world don’t even know you exist. You’re Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense. You’re dead, man.

Not today, Hound. Please, not today.

You started this ride, bro. You lit me up. Now I’m inside you. And I’m telling you something important: maybe it’s more honest to swim with the transgression than pretend to float above it, you dig? Fuck, man, maybe it’s more honest to accelerate the sickness than pretend you got a cure.

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Man, you dig me.

No, you’re a bum and a spectre. And you’re squatting in my head. Please fuck off.

I got nowhere else to be, man.

Accelerate the sickness.

Right on.

Our nation had been drifting a long time. I could see that now. A while back, our car hit some black ice and it’s been sliding ever since — a big, dumb, traction-less hunk of metal sliding towards the ditch.

Accelerate the sickness, man.

How?

But he was gone. I’d banished him by puking over the balcony. Though not entirely. As I lay awake in bed that night, the words ‘accelerate the sickness’ lingered in my head, smelling of geranium: a stoner’s synaesthesia. What did he mean? What did I mean? Maybe I should get out of politics. Reinvent myself. But how could I change my career? This was all I ever wanted. Maybe it was all I ever was. The Fear was expelled, but I was still high as a fucking kite. I imagined Dr. Seuss trying to change his career:

INT. NEWSROOM – DAY

Bored with writing children’s books, DR. SEUSS becomes a cub reporter for the Los Angeles Times. His first round is the crime desk; his first assignment the slaughter of a suburban family. SEUSS has just filed his story, and sits anxiously before his grizzled EDITOR, awaiting judgement.

EDITOR

(reading)

‘There was blood on the stairs,

And blood on the toys/

There was blood in the bath,

And blood on the boys.

‘The Dad, well it seemed,

Was tired of life/

So he bludgeoned them all,

And then used a knife.’

What in God’s name is this, son?

DR. SEUSS

(nervously)

Is it … any good?

EDITOR

Son, have you read a newspaper before?

DR. SEUSS

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I need this job, mister. I have one kid, two kids. Red kids, blue kids.

EDITOR

Are you even a real doctor?

This was the moment everything changed. The Hound was onto something. Something big, something resonant. Accelerate the sickness, he urged.

Well, okay.

A breakthrough in the prawn case

My phone was ringing.

I woke and reached for it, my cognition caught between waking and dreaming. It was a little after 3am.

‘Father?’

‘It’s John.’

‘You’re in hell?’

‘Toby, it’s John.’

My cognition was only slowly sharpening itself, before it cut through the dream-web.

‘Father was on Late Night with Bessie.’

‘What?’

‘So was Churchill.’

‘Wake the fuck up, Toby.’

‘John?’

‘Yes?’

‘Where’s Father?’

‘For fuck’s sake, Toby. We need to go into the office.’

‘It’s 3am.’

‘Jason insists — he’s had a breakthrough with the prawns.’

‘Can’t this wait for the sun?’

‘Probably.’

‘Then tell him to wait.’

John lowered his voice. ‘The Wizard demands it.’

‘Is she in bed with you right now?’

‘See you