Murray was one of my very best friends for such a long time.
He died around five years ago. He had some kind of aneurysm at a traffic light in Melbourne. He was working delivering Heroin for one of the gangs. They didn’t offer health insurance as part of the plan.
I called Murray up in the hospital. He was semi-conscious but recognised me straight away even though we hadn’t talked for more than a decade.
He spoke in the soothing way he always did: “James…..”
He asked me if I knew when the nurses would be bringing him his Methadone.
It was touch and go.
His wife arrived from the middle east where she had been nursing within a couple of days. Murray pointed her in the direction of the Heroin in his flat.
She overdosed and died.
Murray died too.
Sadness, grief and loss is part of the daily diet of a drug addict, as is ecstasy and joy.
No one really knows what particular bundle will arrive and at what time. Nothing is secure.
Last week in the papers it was reported that a 61 year old psychiatrist was seeking to have a driving conviction pardoned after 40 years or so. He was a notable sort of bloke and had spent time motivating the All Blacks.
But the gig was that every time he travelled to the USA he had to have a “waiver of ineligibility” to enter and when he travelled to Australia he had to declare his conviction which, no doubt, held him up in the line.
“When I do right no one remembers, when I do wrong no one forgets.”
-Paparua Prison Tattoo.
When you have been painted black by part of the government apparatus then you stay black and life becomes difficult at the oddest of times.
The psychiatrist’s appeal for a pardon was not allowed.
We are living in the time of the Orange Jesus where if you have political ‘clout’ you can get away with anything. The old saying is true, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
I don’t expect to be pardoned for my sins. I have a waiver of ineligibility to enter the USA but everytime I go there I am referred to “Secondary” (a second interview) and I must wait sometimes hours to face a grim faced officer who is usually in a sour mood and who watches Clint Eastwood movies over and over in his downtime.
I always get the feeling that what the officer really wants is for me to lose my temper. I feel prodded and pushed and spoken down to. I feel taunted and harassed. It doesn’t matter how old my convictions are (my last one was more than thirty years ago) or how kind I’ve been, nor how successful I have been in business.
I am a bad guy. I don’t know Joe Biden nor Donald Trump. I am just a bad guy.
But I have people who love me even if the bureaucrats don’t. Junkies often love each other in a very deep way. They face common enemies. Sometimes they laugh and they cry together. Murray and I did that. We loved each other.
Merry Xmas!