Sausen - To Buzz

To buzz your tits off sniffing butane gas and glue-based products wasn’t too unusual for a Bradford kid when I was growing up. Fortunately solvents never appealed to me, so I never experienced the joys of a lung-freezing premature death. Although it’d make this entry tons more impressive if I had. However, one girl in my school did suffer such an end, prompting wave-after-wave of insincere pricks everywhere cashing in an extra day or two off, being bullshittingly too upset to concentrate on schoolwork. While I was unduly harsh at the time, liberally spreading my hardcore “Well she sort of got what she deserved,” spiel about the place - risking a severe beating from several of her former vaj-tenants - I never used her death to get an extra day off to play Resident Evil on my Playstation. Now I can’t quite claim the same moral high ground for when Princess Diana died, but in my defence I was on the last level and had a geography project to finish. You’d have done the same. Anyway, solvent abuse: it’s not just a cheap toddler/kiddy high, no! A couple of years back I lived in St Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne with a bit of a dodgy drug and hooker-heavy past. The main pub, restaurant and club area there is Fitzroy Street - a place that still retains much of its quaint, vice-laden character. I worked in a greasy burger and burrito joint at its epicentre and was often treated to the delightful company of the paint-sniffing locals in need of change or freebies. One in particular used to zoom up and down the street on his mountain bike, cigarette in one hand, his silvery plastic huffing sack in the other. It was hilarious. One time he was even getting high on the tram, filling the carriage with his distinctive fumes and, as a result, my immature laughter. There was just something about his complete disregard for where he was and who he pissing off, coupled with his ever-present cheeky grin, you couldn’t help but smile. I think his name was Chris and he lived in a place across the road called The Gatwick Hotel. Not quite as two-star as it sounds, more sort of a one-fifth-of-a-fifth-of-a-two-star place, a fraction so confusing it must equal bad. Outside on an evening, most of his fellow inhabitants (including Mungo Jerry‘s Ray Dorset - or at least his stunt double anyway) would gather to smoke a range of fragrant substances, drink their way through gallons of fish-based boxed wine, and shout abuse at all who had the gall to walk past. It’s worth visiting Melbourne just for that really. So, as it fizzles out without any style, I’m aware this piece is lacking any sort of message other than don’t sniff solvents! Unless you’re making people laugh, in which case you might as well go for it.