Hard Cuddles. James Harding

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СКАЧАТЬ a coward. To me, it didn’t matter that it was over so quickly, I would not have been able to do much even if I had become involved. The shame I carried of being too scared for my own safety is a shame that was compounded when I finally did get up and see Carlos walking towards me with blood oozing out of two open wounds. All I could see of him was the whites of his eyes. There was blood everywhere.

      Some people said if Carlos hadn’t been drunk this may not have happened, we may not have taken so long to leave the party. What I heard later at the hospital was if he hadn’t been so drunk, Carlos may not have been able to handle the enormity of the situation.

      There was a wound the size and length of an adult ring finger just above his temple and a deep wound the size and length of an adult middle finger just above his jaw bone. The people who did this were serious about causing harm. He looked at me as he staggered towards me, his eyes said help. Blood was gushing out of the wound above his jaw bone.

      The Fainter emerged from wherever he was and, surprisingly, Carlos wanted to head back to the party. Carlos and I both knew we couldn’t go to his parents’ house—his dad would have killed us.

      When we arrived back at the party it was mayhem. I can safely say no one there had been around or involved in an ultra-violent incident before. The women and girls out the front of the party started hyperventilating and having panic attacks, the blokes were just staring, no one knew what to do or say. It was time to take control of this. I grabbed Carlos who had staggered up onto the front porch and I yelled at the Fainter who kept fainting and falling over. I grabbed them both and got them moving down the street. I started talking to Carlos and kept talking to him and encouraging him, ‘It’s gonna be alright mate, we will go back to my place and we will get some bandages, Dad used to work at Smith and Nephew, so we have heaps of gauze and stuff to sort it out.’ Carlos was actually in really good spirits, which helped the situation. He told me I could have his dog if he died and the Fainter could have his computer. In no time, we were half way home.

      The blood had started to congeal on his skin. On the corner of Murray Rd and Cadby Ave Carlos asked me if it was bad and when he asked this question, he put his tongue through the wound in his cheek and touched it with his finger. You never forget things like that. I didn’t answer, we just kept moving. Soon we arrived at my place and I laid Carlos on the back lawn and the Fainter, well, true to form, he fainted next to him. I ran into my parents’ room and told then there had been an incident.

      Mum and Dad were fantastic. Dad dressed his wounds and mum undressed him. We gave him some of my old clothes and mum washed what he was wearing. I remember this because she said the water turned red in the washing machine. Dad made the dreaded call to Carlos’ older brother, the Smoker, and explained what had happened. The Smoker was there within minutes. When he saw the state of his younger brother, who was bandaged and in much better shape than he was before, the Smoker just shook his head in disgust. I felt some of that disgust directed at me.

      The trip to Monash hospital was a silent one. Carlos was sitting in the front seat with a bucket, the shock had now worn off and he was feeling drowsy. When he was admitted, Carlos managed to sneak off to the toilet where he passed out and smashed his head on the toilet bowl, he was found concussed. Carlos was operated on and had plastic surgery for numerous stitches on both wounds and there were many more superficial wounds on his forearms and body, where he had managed to defend himself. I slept in the Smoker’s car downstairs in the emergency carpark.

      It turned out the music lover from the party, Charlie, had gone home and got his father and headed back to the party for revenge. Instead of going into the party and directing their revenge on the appropriate people, they just drove down the street and attacked some innocent kids. Now I would happily put up my hand and admit if we had done the wrong thing. But let me tell you, they should have known better. Both father and son did some minor jail time for grievous bodily harm.

      This was the moment our lives changed forever. We lost our innocence in Park St, Ormond that night. The innocence of youth was torn out of our hearts by a revenge-stricken adolescent and his father, all over a song on a juke box. Carlos and I became suspicious of people, less trusting. We began to think everyone had an angle and was trying to harm us. It is awful to think that way and it took me years to understand the significance of the experience. Then even longer again to gain closure on the guilt I carried with me. I internalised the situation and made it my fault. After that I felt responsible for Carlos’ scars and for Carlos going forward.

      The positive was that we became blood brothers over our dance with the devil and for years we became a team that was unbreakable. This was only the beginning of a wild ride; Carlos and I were like two bandits with the pedal to the metal.

      Not long after this we both started experimenting with acid, which to me now was a good indicator of the effect this incident had on both of us. We longed to escape. The truth was we felt as though we had both been let down and violated by society. We were young and didn’t understand how to deal with our emotions, so we began to self-medicate. Acid was our first port of call. Most kids experiment with smoking and the drinking, not us, we went straight into the mind-altering world of LSD.

      I have heard if you take more than ten acid trips in your lifetime you can be considered legally insane, acid never leaves your body like other drugs and this is why you have flashbacks. I once took ten tabs in two hours, there is no other drug like acid in my opinion, but it’s not for everyone. There are certain people who completely lose the plot if they dropped one. Carlos and I had lived a nightmare; we weren’t really scared of anything from there on in.

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