He was going to get his dick out. He was going to get it out right there.
“I’M GON’ GET MAH DICK OUT!”
The shopkeeper was five-foot nothing, twelve axe handles wide and not altogether keen on seeing Brad’s cock. His fury over the broken window had abated – replaced by visceral and sincere homophobia – and, given Brad’s preference for taking showers at three-day intervals, I could understand his position.
Brad walked backwards, hand poised above his zipper. Spiros kept his distance as someone went to call the police. I chuckled between mouthfuls of substandard calzone.
“Fucking bail!” was the advice from the gallery. Brad obliged.
The residential streets of Mt Lawley are labyrinthine, poorly lit and replete with foliage and oak trees. Duly, Brad ran straight down Walcott St towards the twenty-four hour convenience store that sells nitrous oxide. He’d made it about eighty metres when the paddywagon caught up with him. When I asked him later why he’d stopped running, he said:
“I just really needed a smoke, man…”
He took a pull on his cigarette.
“…and they were gonna taser me.”
I don’t remember the particulars of how that Wednesday night led to a criminal damage charge, but we probably should’ve seen it coming. My friendship is a cursed yoke that portends despair and misdemeanours.
Personally, I’ve always been on the right side of the law. I was raised in North Perth, educated in Claremont and partially aware of Padbury. I abstain from methamphetamines, Chlamydia and knife fights. My surname isn’t Kickett. There’s absolutely no reason for the fuzz to fuck with me.
Most of my friends, however, seem to have convictions for trifling indiscretions to their names. I don’t want to be misconstrued – I don’t associate with career criminals or debonair firebrands so much as I happen to know a lot of people liable to piss on private property and get caught.
Because of this, a palpable loathing of the police exists within my social circle. When I first moved into my sharehouse, the corkboard above the fridge was empty save for a post-it note marked
wembley swine station. 2pm.
The note was underscored with a sketched penis.
I wish I had the anti-authoritarian zeal of my mates. The veneration of our police by a media that would have you believe Constable Matthew Butcher suffered head injuries for our sins grates me, but I have no inclination to actively defy the law. Terrified of social exclusion, I felt this needed to be rectified and committed to trumping my peers by attracting my own frivolous charge.
Where to start?
My initial thought was to set up a Casio 808 next to the old-time pianist in St George’s terrace and kick freestyles over “Bossanova #4.” The potential for a public nuisance or unlicensed busking charge was outweighed by the greater likelihood of being bottled.
I then considered less street-level ventures, such as attempting to barter down my HECS debt using oxen and straw hats in exchange for several failed philosophy units. This idea, like Kant and Hobbs, failed me miserably and I resorted to shoplifting baked goods from Mt Hawthorn Woolworths. Alas, my crime went unnoticed.
A friend suggested taking a speargun and tackle box to AQWA and making repeated references to pan fried grey nurse, but twenty-three years in Perth has taught me that being a sunburnt oaf isn’t a crime, or indeed discouraged.
The best idea I could muster was to come tearing around Devil’s Elbow past Presbyterian Ladies’ College – towed on rollerblades behind my best mate’s Honda – wearing nought but a ‘Milo Cricket’ hat and zinc cream. I’m curious as to whether fruitboots are referenced in our anti-hoon legislation, and if nothing else, I’d be making good on a threat Brad never followed through with. This idea may have got off the ground had it not been for my cowardice, and that my mother works at the school in question.
I decided it best to toe the line.
I don’t know if such misadventures are symptomatic of understimulated youth in an isolated city. I’d hypothesize it’s because people generally are naturally recalcitrant. A third – and highly likely – explanation is that my friends are fucking jerks.
Do we have any right to feel aggrieved should we be caught doodling on bus stop glass using legal tender? Probably not. As an old lush at one such bus stop told me, I’d be typing this with stumps should I blow my nose too aggressively in Singapore, and all things considered, I’d say we have it pretty good. Much as the moon orbits the earth, which in turn orbits the sun, which in turn causes the tides that sweep away wood and English tourists, it is an inalienable axiom that, wherever a force is applied, human beings will apply counterforce in equal measure, and usually in a stupid hat. One cretin negates the other, parity is maintained, my lawn is free of treadmarks and syringes and the baddies usually end up in jail. I’m certainly not complaining.
A toast to my piety, and to Brad’s cock.
Alasdair Beer is a three-time university dropout, a comedian, a welcher, a jaded boys' school toff, prematurely balding, adequate as a lover, inadequate as a man and afraid of his own blood. He's also a brilliant son-of-a-gun who uses the written word like a surgical saw, chopping themes off at the knees.
He also says you can have his couch. 
