Karangahape Road.

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I recognized him on K Road, just.

I remember how, years before he had told me about a night in Rotorua, when he was six, when he was innocent. There had been many nights like this in his childhood but this one stuck out, imbedded itself in his memory, affected all that he was and all he would become. The cat, his best friend, in one moment asleep at the foot of his bed, the next fur in the air, faster than superman, straight out the open window of the washhouse that doubled as his bedroom.  Then he heard the steel capped work boots, thump up the stairs and kicks at the base of the front door. His mother’s latest boyfriend hardly standing hands were busy holding himself upright and holding onto himself while he pissed a yellow fountain onto piles of unopened bills that spewed out of the overstuffed letter box in front of the porch.

            ‘Open up woman, open up, where the hell r ya?’

            ‘ya got someone else in there ave ya? ‘

She opened the door. He turned around and pissed on her.

He told me he heard when she slapped him. It resonated through the damp apartment.Then he heard nothing. That nothing filled later with soft sounds of fists on flesh, harder sounds of flesh on walls, of a coffee table being smashed, then the thump of a body falling to the floor. No talking, no screaming, no pleading, she had no time, and besides, with him so drunk it would not have mattered.

He told me this story ten years ago when he looked better, when we worked together in a kitchen. His last memory of his mother before being put into care was not a visual one but an audible one. The sounds of flesh on flesh, hard flesh on soft flesh, of thumps and crashes. He told me those sounds haunted him, he would hear them when no-one was there, and in the strangest of places, walking down the street, in a park, in a crowded bar. After he told me I had no reply, the sounds then just the hum of the dishwasher and the stacking of dish after dish.

What could one say, after a story like that?

Back then he listened to Heavy Metal Music as loud as he could play it on head phones as he walked the streets, his daily routine, to the needle exchange and back. Perhaps they drowned his nightmares out. He was listening to them now, as he pulled them down a little to hear me.  He looked straight at me but showed only the very slightest bit of recognition as he did. Those eyes were sunk in to a face which looked absurdly fat on a body that was equally absurdly skinny.

As I talked he just glared.

‘Hey man, how are you’? I asked but got no answer.

‘Hey, it’s me man, remember from last and first café where we used to wash dishes.

To this there was a slight nod, a slight acknowledgement, but no smile.

            ‘I have been overseas, just got back, living in a swanky apartment in Mt Eden with a great view, you should come up. Cuppa tea or something, I know you don’t drink, hepatitis in all, I’ll tell you about my trip.’

He looked at me from out of his puffed cheeks saying nothing.

            ‘How are you man’? I asked again.

‘Fuck it’s been ages, what you been up to’?

He pulled his headphones all the way down to his neck then looked me up and down, taking in my foreign clothes and expensive sunglasses.

            ‘How the fuck do think I am, look at me I am fucked. How the fuck are you? You pretentious git all smart clothes and stories of the world.’

            ‘How the fuck do to you think I would be’?

            ‘Do you really think I was ever going to be Ok’?

Then he walked off, headphones back on, the sounds of Metallica blasting so loud. I am sure he could hear nothing else.

Shortlisted for the Best of Auckland, Writers cafe 2019