Locked Out, or As Anastacia Might Put It, Left Outside Alone.

In my youth I was a massive Anastacia fan. Sure my cousins gave me epic shit about it. They spoke of how her voice was utterly awful and annoying, how I would be embarrassed one day and how she was basically devastatingly undermining the important efforts of more important bands like Pearl Jam and The Fugees.

To that I say, fuck the 90's. And also I was like 12 they could have cut me a break with my Bieber level worship of Anastacia, I didn't need to have taste then.

You might remember Anastacia as a sort of female Bono, also with an allegedly annoying voice and also who did Evanescence before that was...cool?

This song and video conveniently display all three.

But they also express something I am hitting at. The chorus, or hook, notes the isolation of being 'Left Outside Alone', quote:

'I wonder if you know, how it really feels

To be left outside alone.'

I can only assume my girl Anastacia is referring to emotional neglect in a relationship that likens itself to being outside, with all its weather, and alone with all its lack of people.

Years later, I would know exactly what that is like.

We are at a bar on Oxford St., Sydney’s gay street and also one of the more fun. Not uncommon for us; we lived four blocks away, enjoyed partying and, well both those things.

I am with my house-mate, a sociable fellow and a very dear friend. We have a new house-mate and because of this a shortage of keys. Thinking back on it, I have no idea why the new house-mate resulted in a lack of keys.

We drink and party and have fun, a usual Friday/Saturday night. Then my social friend wants to leave but has no keys. No big deal, take mine. I am too drunk to care or consider the implications. I hand over the precious metal and assure him I will meet him back at the house in the next hour or so.

He disappears, I drink on. Good times, I am having fun. I go on like this for a while. Then, the pain of being human, the fun is over. I am too fucked and it is, regrettably time to go home.

I knock on the door. Nothing. I knock again, louder, still nothing. I knock once more, louder still, and again nothing. I pull my phone from my pocket, dead.

I am drunk and weary. My friend and my keys are both inside. I sit on the step for forty minutes in the brisk Sydney barely-morning. I wonder how this situation will end. I try to prop myself in the door jam thinking I might be able to sleep it off there. No dice, I am too big and the jam too small.

I look up to his window and notice it is open. I want to shout through the unsecured membrane but reconsider, my better judgement pulls me to earth. Our neighbours are working professionals and yuppie families, I can't fuck their tomorrow.

I sit again on the step and notice it is bin night. His window is pretty big, his bed is nearby enough that window that with a good throw I can wake him . I begin lobbing rubbish through the window. Well, mostly through, a fair amount bounced back. I choose from the recycling because I don't want anything soiled to land in his sanctuary, I am desperate but not a monster.

I land around a dozen good throws. No dice. I figure something heavier might do the trick. I fish a large red-bull can from the bin, pedantically drain it and begin throwing. Part of my problem is that to thread the garbage through the window I need to text-book lob, essentially garunteeing a soft landing and disallowing a wake-up call.

I throw the can maybe half a dozen times without hitting the spot. It loudly clangs on the building and falls to earth, over and over.

A pissed-off neighbour, hopefully unaware of my plight, yells.

'Could you please shut the fuck up'

Let it not be said that manners are lost on the affluent.

With this latest defeat I walk to a local park. I am now more weary than drunk, the sun is cresting but it is still cold and I desire a cigarette. I s ee a fat, bald and designer-jeans man walking his abomination of a dog. I am lapping for the smoke relief of a cigarette but have no lighter (I threw that through the window, made a shit load of sense at the time). I see his smoking. Anti-smoking snobbery is not yet a thing.

I ask if I might borrow his lighter. He passes one to me, somewhat passive aggresively, and I torch. We smoke together and I explain my plight. To him I am, on some level, homeless. Though on every level, pathetic

This is how I am to this weird guy and his dog, on some level. 

         He stays on, I figure, because his dog is in ecstasy and probably because the poor little bastard spends all his days in some affluent, post-modern shithole. I bludge his lighter one more time before he leaves.

I sit and smoke alone. The sun is making it's way now. The suburb is lit up. The light looks, and feels, like a supreme hangover. I take that first lit cigarette and use it to torch a second, and a third.

Then I decide we might be close to the hours when the waking might offer assistance. Tough call in any city but I sincerely have no other call. I check my watch, 6 A.M. I have the smouldering butt of the third cigarette and no lighter. I have five cigarettes left, I chain them all. I know the guy next door is a family man.

I know a family lives there so figure the wife is also a family woman, and that the kids are probably family kids. I smoke and shield my cold body in the foetal position with the t-shirt over the knees.

At 7 A.M the woman next door asks me if I would like to walk through her house to get to my backyard. I don't know too many real-life saints.

I stroll across the floor, complete with road map carpet, and promptly hop the fence. The windows are barred and the back-door latch is just out of my reach. I yell up the stairway. It is late enough in the day that I can.

'Noel' comes the eventual reply.

'I'm locked out'.

My social friend and room mate is awake. He let's me in.

'I Woke up and my room was full of garbage'

He buys me a Dominoes sandwhich as repayment.

I promptly accept.

We watch Colbert Report and get stoned.

So, yes Anny, I do.

NP.