The Angel of Bang Kwang Prison Read Online Free PDF Page B

drifted in and out of being a biker, Sharpie and hippie for some time but gradually peace, love and tie-dye clothes won out.
    I much preferred being a hippie and felt it suited me better. The hippie culture just appealed more to me and suited my personality. I was a real flower child; I wanted to be free and shed all the weight of expectation and responsibility that society places on you. I stopped wearing a bra because how could you be free if your breasts were rigid? … or something like that. My bags were beaded affairs covered in little mirrors; I wore a beret with John Lennon-type glasses, the little round ones. I only wore silver jewellery and lots of it. I even made some of my own jewellery; being a hippie brought out my artistic and creative streak.
    Nevertheless, however I styled my hair, I continued to drink and do drugs like there was no tomorrow. There wasn’t any ecstasy or cocaine in Australia at the time. I mostly stuck with grass, LSD, and prescription pills. I popped uppers and downers as if they were sweets. Fortunately I didn’t particularly like heroin when I tried it—God knows I would not be here if I had. I smoked Buddha Sticks; marijuana laced with opium. Although, even if I had liked it there wasn’t too much of it about and I wasn’t going to start spending a fortune I didn’t have. What I did have was something of a death wish; I imagined myself dead and beautiful with a needle stuck into my arm—somehow I envisaged this as a suitably dramatic way to go. Tragedy had a huge appeal for me and I really wasn’t too interested in a tomorrow. I was drinking lunatic amounts of hard liquor. You might have difficulty believing that I would regularly down an entire bottle of Bacardi and not stop gulping until every last drop was gone. But I did. I drank not just to get drunk, but to get absolutely paralytic. I had absolutely no regard for my personal safety. I wouldn’t know where I was or who I was with. Sometimes I would wake up to discover that I had been beaten up, and possibly worse, but would have no memory of the previous evening. I had been stealing alcohol since I was 12. I devised ‘Jungle Juice’, which was basically a pint of as many different drinks as you could pilfer. Naturally it was extremely powerful stuff that would blow your head after one dose.
    I had started smoking cigarettes at seven and by the time I was in my early teens I was smoking before school, during the lunch break and after school—cigarettes or grass, whatever was handier. Possibly it was as much for the social aspect as it was for the nicotine; smoking was rarely done alone. I also varied my drugs with sniffing—glue, petrol, aerosols or whatever I could get my hands on. Petrol, which was easy to obtain, was a particular favourite, so much so that friends called me ‘Petrol Head’.
    I nearly accidentally set myself alight one day when I confused my head with the petrol can; instead of pouring the petrol back into the can I poured it over my head and then reached for a cigarette and lighter. Thankfully my stoned friends managed to wrestle the light from me. They rushed me to the house of this much older guy who we found ourselves turning to in matters of crisis. After rolling his eyes to Heaven at the sight of my head, he patiently and laboriously washed the petrol out of my hair.
    He and his house mates were real playboys and there were always lots of women hanging around there but it was a place where we crashed without bother. I never knew for sure what they did for a living. For some reason they all struck me as the sort of blokes who sold nice cars. There was always good music on no matter what time of the day or night we turned up at. They had a great record collection and the best stereo around, not to mention their bar. Money obviously wasn’t a problem. They seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time playing billiards and pool, and what made this even more interesting for the casual observer was