I had a service to do. A Mazda 626. The newest cars in the Mazda line. The first of the rear wheel drives. The car itself was in for its ten thousand kay service - an easy job by any means. Plugs, points clean, check the brakes, the auto trans, oil and filter change, ensure there are no squeaks and rattles. The usual. Save for a fuel leak somewhere which we quickly ascertained to be the fuel tank's central seal. It would entail a replacement. For some ungodly reason, our Stores department just happened to have one in stock, so under went the jack, up came the rear end, in went the jack stands, off came the rear tyres and I set to work.
By loosening the retainer strap bolts a little, I could hear that there was still a substantial amount of fuel in the tank. Ordinarily, I could undo the main fuel and breather lines and let the contents out with a slow bleed but the customer wanted the car back that same afternoon so I stuck an old bit of hose down the filler pipe, grabbed a clean, empty drum and started sucking. After a few attempts the vapours started to make me feel light headed, so I sat on one of the tyres by the rear brakes and continued sucking until I could get a solid flow.
Unfortunately - or fortunately, if interpreted in a certain light - the fuel was a little more resistant to my efforts than I'd expected.
I watched my hands shimmer and fade in and out. I felt the morning breeze on my prickling skin, more gentle and urgent than the caress of any lover. The sunlight started to make small sounds. I breathed deeply between sucks until finally the fuel started to pour into the small drum. But by then the damage was done...
I was a teenaged girl. I knew this somehow because of a pain deep in my tummy. The coming of a period, I felt. Or perhaps hunger. A rural place. Unidentifiable, as was the tongue I was speaking. As was the language of those around me. Shabby, practical and ageless clothing. European probably. Laughter and colour and dirt in every pore from my strong forearms down to my fingertips. The smell of cut wheat from fields nearby. A large house off in the distance. Save for the hard, skin-shredding labour we were toiling through, I could never have imagined a place to be so surrendered to dreamy languor. My heart pounding, I started to cough as I laughed. A chemical cough. Nondescript faces, old before their time, laughing at me, with me. I turned my head slightly and there was green on a nearby hill. -
"Mal? Are you okay?"
It was Viv. the company's old accountant. A no-nonsense soul but I loved his self-deprecating, wry wit.
"You okay, mate?"
"I'm fine. I think I siphoned the stuff wrong."
A barely audible laugh. "Just take your time, mate. You look pale. Breathe deep. We've all done it."
"Is he alright?" This from the foreman a couple of bays down - head buried deep in the guts of a rotting Capella, fat arse stuck up over the front guard.
"He's taken to putting down a tipple prior to lunch", Viv smiled at no one in particular as he walked back down the path to the front office.
And immediately I was sucked back into the vortex. One second I'm sitting in a workshop stinking of fuel and rubber and brake dust and engine oil and the next I'm a soldier. Again all details a blur of terrifying sights, inhuman sounds and terrible smells. It could have been the Kaiser, it could have been Genghis Khan, Alexander of Macedon or Navarre at Dien Bien Phu, for all I knew. All I could say with any certainty was that I was a soldier. And I was terrified. I could feel a small spurt of urine trickle into my uniform. And there was screaming off in the near distance. I knew this with suprahuman assuredness. A certainty that transcended all history and every known logic. I held no weapon and this worried me. I scrabbled about for something, anything, and could find nothing. I wanted to scream. Or die a quick death. Right then, in that moment, either would have helped immensely. Because I had been here forever.
Something hard struck me and I flew painlessly above myself. Further and further from that blazing field of death. Through the chilling wind and onwards. Looking down even as the clouds swallowed the vista I wanted with every fiber of my being to forget. Rapidly out into the perfect cold of space until even the planet was nothing but a memory of a pin head.
And somewhere out there, in some uncharted eyrie of the infinite, a pattern began to emerge.
Triangle upon triangle. Each a living cameo trapped in every colour and hue known to the eye and some colours besides. Every sex and every age. Every conceivable tongue and every way of life. Some images cut short, as if from an early death and some playing out within its triangular confines for time beyond my attention span. Every backdrop and landscape. Every cruelty and I'm confident now, every kindness.
Somewhere an engine roared to life bringing me back to this shaking husk sitting on a tyre siphoning petrol in a workshop in Top Ryde.
But I was gone again. I wanted to be gone again. In that moment I wanted to be gone so badly I could have killed or died. An abyss of sickness, the likes of which I'd never experienced and likely will never experience again.
And now I'm a boy. Again, the completeness of my knowledge because I was fearless and running across sand. Scared of nothing and therefore so utterly alien to the real life I had just left behind. A storm was not too far off in the high sky and a handful of people in the distance were making celebratory and positive noises about its coming. Everything was astir and I could taste the coming water in my mouth and smell it keenly in my nose. And I was running carefree and faultless towards it. And as the first large drop splatted on my face -
"What are you doing, goober?" It was Wocko, the senior apprentice.
It took me some moments to answer as the boundless pyramid of existence gently placed the me that I had been firmly back in the here and now - pale sweating skin, halting breath and uncontrollable shaking hands.
"...I'm alright."
"Need a hand?
"I'm alright."
I sat a while longer to make sure that I wasn't suddenly going to be whisked off, sucked up into another lifetime. And as the trembling subsided, I saw that the tank was now empty. I loosened the remaining bolts but the tank was heavier than it looked. It slipped in my petrol-soaked hands and it was only after I had put it to one side, that I noticed that a sharp burr had sliced the joint in my thumb to the bone. Still I continued to work, unpacking the new tank and removing the travel seals, unconcerned about this slightly grisly development.
"What's that on the ground?!", Wocko again.
" 'N dunno."
"Is that blood? Jesus, Connell. It's pissing out. What the fuck happened?"
"The tank slipped?"
"Greggy, where's the First Aid stuff? Connell's cut his hand open."
"Give us a look." The disinterested foreman. "Well, that's a fine one. Take him 'round to the Doc's next door. Looks like stitches. Keep holding your hand up. That's it."
...
I'm looking at the small scar from that week of bleeding. Barely discernible now. But it's there yet. And I remember the small piss stain in my overalls that morning.
I'm not spiritual (although I do think the day is coming when we need to reinvigorate that word with substance rather than the gentrified and empty meme it has become). I'm not an irresponsible advocate for petrol sniffing. Like everyone else I've done my share of drugs. Boasted about more substance and alcohol abuse than I've really experienced and in this respect I'm completely normal. But even though I've been straight for much longer than I care to remember, that singular experience was one I never could recreate through any means - chemically enhanced or otherwise. And nor did I nor would I really try.
Once in a lifetime...
It's Alright Ma (I'm only bleeding).
