Altered Perceptions


By Katzmarek


This is basically a true story. It remains the Authors property and may not be used for gain without the 
Authors express permission in writing.





Chukka chukka BLAT chukka chukka POP chukka chukka


Will it start before I run out of hill? I didnt know or particularly cared.


Chukka chukka chukka POP POP chukka chukka BANG


The chicken wire baffle sounded a tinny rattle from the otherwise straight-through exhaust.


I dont know why we put those things in the pipes in those days. I think it may have been the law banning 
loud exhausts. It never made any difference to the volume, as I recall.


I reached the bottom of the hill and still the damned thing hadnt sprung to life. Not that it cracked the 
bubble of euphoria in which I floated. A bus failing to take the corner and depositing glass and passengers 
in an untidy heap would have seemed hysterically funny.


LSD, containing a decent amount of Speed in the mix, had that effect. Disassociative was the term some 
shrink used. To laugh hysterically at a traffic accident was, disassociative behaviour. Damn! Heres me 
thinking I was just antisocial.


I pushed the bike around the back of the Florists, hoping it wouldnt be seen. I remembered a pal whod 
chained his Triumph to a water pipe outside his bedroom window. He used the thick safety chain off a 
railway wagon, I think, his dog was leashed to the back wheel.


In the morning, no motorcycle, only water gushing out of a sawn-through water pipe and his dog looking 
sorry for itself.


I lit out for town through the old road tunnel. The same tunnel I was going to blast through on the modified 
Yamaha. The thunder rolling along behind me like a Black Sabbath concert and the kaleidoscope of 
flashing colours from the mercury-vapour lamps, prismed out in my vision by the chemicals.


The light still bathed me with its brilliance. It warmed my body and made me throb with wellbeing. The 
rolling cars below, thronging their way to the suburbs sounded like the rush of water from a broken fire 
hydrant.


A drunk, pedaling along on an old bicycle wove up behind me and I stuck out my thumb. He stopped and I 
hopped up onto the crossbar. He wobbled and swayed as he struggled to propel the over-laden contraption 
forward, I used my outstretched foot to keep it off the wall of the tunnel.


By the end of the kilometre long tunnel, my chauffeur was blown by the exertion and the Carbon-
Monoxide. Leaning over the railing, gasping, he threatened to puke a half-bottle of Scotch onto the 
commuter traffic.


Generals gathered in their massAAAAS, I sang at the top of my voice, JUST like witches at black 
masses.


An extravagant Tony Iommi air-guitar sweep of the arm and a DOW DOW.


Evil minds that plot destrucSHUUUN WEEEOW DOW DOW sorcerERS of deaths 
construction


A perfect Ozzie Osbourne vocal, or so it seemed to me.


I floated along on my magic carpet through the crowds of shoppers in the city centre. A group of teenage 
girls, taking up the whole pavement as teenagers do, came strolling towards me. I thought I recognised one 
of them and stretched out my arms in preparation for a group hug.


They were absolute strangers and parted like the Red Sea with comments like, wanker, pervert, and it 
takes all sorts. Words that reminded me of my unhappy high school years.


Words that told me of what a sin it was to be different, to be smarter, and to be chronically shy. The sin of 
homo and the sin of knowing the answers in class.


I decided to visit my local. At least it was my local when I lived in the area. It was clear across town, but 
when I arrived there I was not tired, buoyed as I was with chemical energy.


The pub was filled with people I knew, from work and from the neighbourhood. I was hauled to a table and 
a handle of draught placed before me. 


They liked me there, filled as it was in those days with students, longhairs and freaks of every sort. Time 
would come when the pub would be modernised with chrome and black vinyl and no one went there any 
more.


Two pints later and a guy I used to work with suggested we head back to his place. That was a metaphor for 
the sharing of a few joints in privacy. 


His house was on the other side of the public gardens. They had a flowering Cherry blossom tree there, a 
gift from the Japanese government, and it was floodlit at night. Naturally this was a magnet for every 
wasted hippie in the region, stretching out in the grass and looking at Lucy and her diamonds.


The gardens lay on the side of a hill. The terrain, here is like Gallipolis Anzac cove, rugged. Like that 
piece of Turkey was blessed with a temperate climate and covered with a capital city.


Somehow I hiked up the steep slope, or rather floated, and reached the top. The lights of the city spread out 
like a carpet below, twinkling in the summers night.


The old 1920s style house was quite typical of the area. This was well before the 1980s when so much of 
the city was bulldozed for glass towers and motorways.


Molded ceilings, the floor tongue and grooved with native hardwood, the smell a mixture of mildew and 
coal gas. 


We toked a couple of logs of Buddha. You could buy a stick for $20 in those days. Thinned out with 
tobacco, Aussie style, you could get about 20 joints.


Pretty soon the top of my head was burning and I was taking less and less interest in the conversation, that 
is, if there was one. Instead the dilemma of the heater and the open window became the most important 
thing in my life.


Why would someone have on an electric heater AND a window open. It didnt make sense and it was 
very necessary for me to solve the problem.


I still hadnt found a solution when the bomb went off in my head. One moment I was sitting on a stool 
pondering the great question and the next moment a woven straw mat lay inches from my face. A growl 
came from somewhere and deep down I knew it was my own voice.


Some psychiatrist said something about depersonalisation.  I remember the tapes being wiped, all my 
reference points marking me as distinct from everyone else in the room, gone. For what seemed like an age, 
I couldnt remember anything, even my own name, let alone where I was.


It crept back slowly, first MY name, then someone elses, then where I worked and where I was. Two, then 
three, until eventually 5 Pentobarbital hauled me back from outer space.


Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood were singing to me about Phaedra when the blond, peaches and cream 
apparition glided into the room. I was slunk in an easy chair trembling with an unbelievable terror at the 
time.


Id thought Id finally done it, you see. Burnt out significant parts of my brain from which I would never 
recover. The worse fear imaginable, to me, was becoming a gibbering idiot, blocked up by anti-psychotics 
and daily fried by Electro-Convulsive Therapy.


The apparition seated herself close-by, concern written all over her face. She was English, I think and she 
came with an equally blond brother.


A vivid aura emanated all around her that made the surrounding air crackle with static electricity. To say 
she was beautiful was the biggest of understatements. Maybe I didnt really believe I had died and gone to 
heaven, but I believed that an angel had dropped in to say hello.


I tried to talk but my words came out disjointed and meaningless. She responded with puzzled expressions 
and I knew I was not doing very well in the mating game.


I needed a lift home and she had a car, a 1964 Ford Anglia. She said, sure shed give me a lift, and are 
you going to be ok?


She had a tape of Van Morrison and played it all the way home. I hated Van and still do, dont know why, 
after all, it was supposed to be MY generation, wasnt it?


But she smiled with concern at each traffic light. I didnt want her concern, just her infatuation.


I dont remember conversing at all, although I think I must have said something. Suffice to say it probably 
didnt make a lot of sense. At some stage I must have mentioned my address, after all.


She deposited me with my flatmates and left. I slept through till the afternoon the next day, or the next, Im 
not sure.


I recovered the bike behind the Florist shop, still with the fuel tap in the off position. It fired up first kick 
and I ran it the short distance home.


Something had shifted for me that night, however. A couple of hundred bucks worth of LSD and 
downers went down the toilet for a start. My battered brain had demonstrated it was not indestructible and 
Id had enough. Maybe Id just taken a quantum leap in maturity.


My angel did return, though. Id organised a party at my flat and an embarrassingly few turned up. I never 
was a good organiser and it just confirmed for me that my lousy self-esteem was well earned.


My angel, her brother and another couple effectively doubled the population of my lounge. On home 
ground I was more talkative and my newfound drug abstinence found my mind unusually clear. Albeit I 
was still somewhat strung out and suffering repeated acid flashes.


But I didnt care when the walls started to wobble, because I got experienced at ignoring these little 
inconveniences. So the rain was coloured and lights radiated the visual spectrum, but only the primary 
colours.


The biggest handicap, though was a complete inability to deal with stress. I would just freeze up into some 
catatonic state and be completely unable to move a muscle. Then miraculously it would set me free just as 
quickly, like an engine piston pre-seizing.


Some twenty years later, a woman that had known me back then told me shed always thought I had been a 
spunk. This little revelation was far too late to take full advantage of, but my angel must have seen 
something.


We talked well into the lightening sky as dawn stalked us. I dont remember the passing of the hours, they 
just went. She finally felt the first twinge of fatigue and I suggested we sleep in my room. 


I didnt want to stop talking, I was afraid the magic would end and we would resume our normal lives. 
However, she turned her back to me, pulled my arm over her and held me tight. I was too scared to move it, 
even after her slow rhythmic breathing told me she was asleep.


We awoke around noon, still spooned together and she got up quickly. The faded denims were on in a flash 
and she told me she really enjoyed herself and we must, do it again, soon.


Sadly we never did, we just never managed another get together. I think she became a lawyer, 
specialising in family law, at least so the rumours went. In fact, now I dont even remember her name.


Katzmarek 










