WITCHY CHIN.
I was surrounded by witches… They were coming in the goddam window
A drawing taken from a photo of her I stole.
So there I was a young man. Location Central Auckland New Zealand. Queen Street.
Age 17. Date Late Autumn 1994, In the prime of health. I was happily getting overweight and had greasy skin and pimples on my legs. For months I had been feeding myself on a festering diet of coke, shoplifted candy, Wendy’s, and the occasional Chinese feed, foraged homeless-man style from nearby food courts.
But I was always walking everywhere in my heavy trench coat and army boots, and converting the sugars and fats into AWESOMENESS.
Having grown up in a household where there never seemed to be quite enough food, and always being in a skinny state of perpetual hunger as a youth, I was now overcompensating. Life was good.
I worked at Wendy’s. I loved it. I ate all the leftovers in the upper dining room.
There were no cameras back then. No one could see anything going on.
I would stay in the upstairs storage room reading books. When I heard someone putting in the code for the door I would put the book away and start wiping down stacks of trays.
Every 30 min or so, I would do a round of the dining room. Clear tables away, do garbage runs if needed and eat any leftovers.
A simple and good life in a simple and good time.
I lived up the road, in the downstairs laundry of a group of pseudo-intellectual university students. This was the progression from my pissy-smelling hole in the tree home. After the first payday, I had secured myself a place to live for 40 dollars a week in this laundry. I lived between the washer and the drier in a huge mounded nest of moldy-smelling clothes I had bought from the Salvation Army. When it was cold I would burrow deep into the nest; when it got really cold, I would just put another old man suit on.
I wasn’t allowed in the house nor was I to speak to them unless spoken to. They called me “The Troll” or “The Wendy’s Guy.” I assured them I had a lot of cool things to say and they fobbed me off in an ultra-hip fashion with, “We know you do—That is why you are not to speak to us.”
What did I know eh? To them, I was just a greasy trench coat-wearing maniac kid.
I didn’t care! I had my own thing rolling, cool stuff that nobody knew about.
One thing they didn’t know about was that I put the drier on and loaded it with some of my clothes pile in the middle of the cold nights, receiving the double whammy of warmth from the hot strange smelling air that blew out the back of the drier and then the hot clothes that I pulled steaming from the machine. I would mound these super-heated clothes over me for a few minutes of life-saving warmth, then when it got too cold I would repeat this procedure.
If you ever do this, be very careful of metal buttons. Those bastards tend to heat up quite a bit!
The other awesome “cool stuff that they didn’t know about” was my Friday and Saturday nights.
Weekdays were spent working from 7 till 4 and after that, I spent most of my time annoying people and hanging out in the games rooms of the university where I would also occasionally shower in the gym changing rooms.
When Friday came I would finish work and start off my night of fun by actually buying two bacon cheese burgers and a biggie fries for carb and fat-filled staying power, and then I would drink a “Big Slam” of Mountain Dew. I did not know it was caffeinated.
NZ sold what was called THE BIG SLAM. One-litre bottle of Mountain Dew for $2, and this was good. GRAB IT! SLAM IT! Genuis.
I would buy another Big Slam, to stash in one of the many inner and hidden pockets of my heavy trench coat. Into the pockets would go my superhero/vigilante kit.
A six-inch army knife, a heavy steel knuckle duster, a 10-inch long lead cosh, taped around and around with duct tape, a butterfly knife, and a small red vegetable knife that I had sharpened both sides of the blade of to turn it into an instrument of secret stabbing power. I also had a small glass bottle full of petrol in case I felt something needed to be torched… but more often than not I left that one at home.
Surprisingly at this point in my life, I wasn’t doing any drugs… which is just as well probably. My drugs were Mountain Dew and wandering about in my trench coat, furtively peering about like a lunatic. I would also wear a brown cardigan, army pants, and large, black army boots that were two sizes too big for me, but I stuffed the ends with socks from my clothes pile.
I was a hero in my own mind called The Super Drifter!
Up Queen Street I would stride! Past cafes and night lifers and moviegoers and people driving by in cars. I was a kid from a small country town. The very whiff of traffic lights or someone hollering out obscenities as they whizzed past in a car was energizing and intoxicating to me. I would scream back at them and then buzzed from the whole rebelliousness of it would scream out long screams of “FREEEEEEEEDOOOOM!!!!!!”, into the night.
Try it. If you can’t do big long freedom screams into the night… there’s no hope for you.
I was blazing my own trail man! Making my own way. While other 17 year olds were at home with mummy and daddy making sure they were in bed by 10, I was carving out my own little piss-ant section of existence. No one could tell me what to do. No one would know if I wound up face-down in a dumpster.
I could yell out and shriek into the night all I wanted, and if you had a problem with that I was armed and ready to fight you to the death.
I would arrive at the Ponsonby Community Center. This was the underground hardcore/punk scene of New Zealand. One small hall… 50 people. 5 bands for 5 bucks. I was there in that special time and place. I was one of the chosen. How did I find out about this place? Flyers on Telephone poles...
Often I would see a friend of mine “RA” sprawled out in the bushes or half on the pavement and half on the road. He would be absolutely munted and it always seemed like some girl would be taking care of him. One time he had all sorts of strange waxy green stuff in his spiky punk hair. I later found out it was melted crayon.
Even at such a young age, he had decided to embark on the wastrel life. He was a young punk, only 14 years old—I was 17 and on a mission so I only nodded coolly at his shouted drunk greeting, before striding inside.
He was doing his school of hard knocks young punk training. I could respect that by not interfering or caring.
The inside was a sweaty, crowded room of exploding punk noise. I would mosh to the frenzied melodies.
With my arms held around my head to protect against blows and smacks, I would keep my eyes on the ground- occasionally diving down to grab a stray dollar coin, condom, or bus pass that had flown from a partier’s open pocket. I could gather from five to ten dollars throughout the night this way. I would occasionally find small bags of weed and many lighters which could be given away to older kids for a momentary and fleeting feeling of being appreciated. This feeling was like a little warm 40-watt bulb flickering on in my heart for a few seconds.
One night upon staggering exhilarated, bruised and gasping from the hall I saw a tall thin red-headed woman eyeing me like a calculating shark…
She was in her mid-20s, wearing a black leather jacket and rainbow-striped tights ending in black Dr Marten Boots.
She had a slightly witchy chin…
Not incredibly pretty, nor wholly terrifying. Definitely a woman. Her long black painted nails drummed upon the wooden railing as she looked me up and down.
I tried to put on an air of experience and cool. I might have even tried my new “Sparkly eyes technique on her…
This may have worked… she suddenly smiled and I began to talk rapidly and hopefully convincingly.
I don’t know what the hell I was going on about but before long she was leading me down the road to a park. She threw me down on the grass and in seconds I was kissing and fumbling. At one point someone yelled ”Get into it mate!!!”from across the dark and shadowy park.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP AND FUCK OFF PRICK!!” She screamed at him before returning to me. Exciting.
In the middle of the hot and heavy excitement, she leaped from me and said mournfully “I can’t do this! You’re just going to leave me like all the rest!”
What followed was an unbelievably pitiful display of promising, pleading, and cajoling on my part. I was not suitably conversant with my own hideous and savage male teen beast nature and did not know that my own lust, when properly slaked, would seek to destroy any sort of sane relationship, not based wholly on sex or food, in the search for more and greater amounts of sex and food.
After listening to my shameful beggar-worthy appeal she grinned a witchy grin and said “OK I’ll take you home.”
This meant a high probability of sex and thus I was accordingly hypnotized and helpless as I was driven to her place, stripped of clothes, thrown down on the mattress and demanded to “Do this and do that now. No! That’s too much!” and, “Yes! Good, but it’s not enough! Faster! More! etc etc etc. etc etc etc.
It is not the purpose of the story to provide the reader with a pornographic panorama.
The final freaky twist is far too funny to bother with detailing the ability of a completely sex starved 17-year old to get another erection within a minute of spending himself; or with how it may be possible for said 17 year old to carry on through the night in this fashion, until finally after the 14th time, no amount of goading by the red-headed succubus could produce anything but a small drip, which felt like equal parts knee cartilage and blood, and caused the young man to scream out in agony, crawl to the edge of the mattress, and desperately attempt to unhunch the twitching ball of cramps his body had become.
All to The HOLE album Miss World, which played loudly and looped ALL NIGHT LONG.
To this day I cannot hear Courtney Love’s voice without shivering.
Awakening from a depletion-induced unconsciousness, I saw the Witchy Chin sprawled naked on the stained mattress on the floor that was her bed.
After getting up, silently removing the (still playing) Hole CD from the player and hiding it under a book on Wicca, I took stock of my surroundings.
I had no idea that the squalid, ciggie butt, bong water, incense, ash, and spilled booze-soaked flat style of living was a sure sign of financial, and moral destitution. Coming from living on a concrete floor in a pile of clothes, with rats running across my face in the middle of the night, I thought she had it made.
The abundance of candles, crystals, sharp knives, and animal skulls gave the room a nice pagan look.
The huge hand-painted mural on the wall, depicted a gigantic bat-winged, naked, red-headed woman, holding a bloody knife and one foot raised up on a human skull, surrounded by kneeling black-robed figures and headed in Ye olde timey script with “SATANIC BLOOD ANGEL” should have made me think twice about staying in the room a moment longer… but it thought it FUCKIN RULED!
I was the boyfriend of THE SATANIC BLOOD ANGEL!
I put on undies and crept down the hallway to the kitchen. I may have done a little dance...
A skinny half-naked man on the couch said “Prancing about in your just got laid underpants eh..?” He had burns in the shape of pentagrams on his arms, a huge tattoo of a goat’s head on his back, and was rolling a cigarette from the butts of the dead cigarettes in the ashtray.
I tried to smile and crept back to the room.
Witchy Chin was awake and all smiles and hellos.
I put my clothes on and she drove me to work at Wendy’s.
We chatted in the car like regular humans.
She was waiting for me when I finished. I was refueled and keen. She took me back to her house and threw me in the shower, complaining that I smelled like fries and burgers…then back to the mattress.
Nature – She’s a Savage Beast.
That night, there were noises coming from the ceiling and I had the horrid feeling I was being watched. It was just too creepy. Too many candles going- too much light and too much actress-like screaming (on her part of course).
This was getting a bit nuts… even by my drifter wastrel standards…and I usually LOVED things that were nuts…but this madness was just too crazy.
I felt like I was being literally drained of my soul’s essence…
The next morning waking once again as a hunched and depleted husk, I realized that a normal sort of breakup would not cut it… I would have to move to another town… possibly even go into hiding…this was the end of my life in this city of course. I would have to flee Auckland.
I dressed and made sure I had everything.
I braced myself and said…
“I’m leaving, I’m off down-county to go fruit picking. I’ve got a new job.”
Something I decided to make true that week.
She leapt off the bed fast and witchy, like a big scary jumping spider!
“THEY ALWAYS DO THIS!” She screamed!
She was a perfectly terrifying naked ginger demon. She started hurling hard sharp things from the dresser at me. I was trying hard not to laugh at the spectacle but when I was hit full in the neck by the pointy part of a goat horn, I snapped out of it. I took off toward the door.
She caught me by the hair and swung a long sharp Satan knife up towards my chin.
I saw her plan was to hold this knife against my throat and make me some kind of love hostage? But I was fast and punched her brutally hard in the left tit with all I had.
POW!
She went down with a crone-like shriek and I ran out the door and up the street and straight to Wendy’s to quit and flee the city.
Star wipe to seven years later, I was back in that city at a party (actually on the roof of a party) when the evil of those nights came full circle.
I got there because I had overheard two people talking in a café and they happened to be talking about a party. They mentioned a name I recognized… The name of a slender black-clad Goth temptress that I had had a tryst with in the graveyard a short walk from the Ponsonby community center, a few weeks before the Witchey Chin episode…not worth writing a story about… It was sane PG 13 and vanilla.
Healing even. Well as healing as a graveyard hookups could be…
I never saw her again after that night. But hey it was her birthday—what better present than ME?
When the two girls left the café I followed them, calmly tailing them into the party.
I saw her in the kitchen eating a large piece of cake. She had more than quadrupled in size since I saw her last… so because I was a shallow bastard, I just kept rocking right through the party and out the other side.
There was a ladder leaning up against the roof so I climbed it and got up on the roof where I was safe.
I laughed and joked, smoked, and drank with the humans on the roof. After a while, I discovered that a freaky, wet-wool-smelling, dread-locked, punk, feral-type girl was really, really interested in me…. This was interesting….
We talked and joked for some time…and she eventually revealed the source of her fascination…
She told me of two 2-hour VHS videos of a 17-year-old me, above, astride, behind and under some skinny Redhead, witchy chinned gal. All filmed from a secret room above Witchy Chin’s room.
How had she come to watch these videos?... About a year ago she had a short and twisted relationship with a tattooed and burned satanic guy. He had a “home video” collection featuring many young men and Witchy Chin. It was obvious to me from Witchy Chin’s theatrics that she was in on this.
It’s scary to think that those videos of me, and likely other guys, are out there in the world somewhere… but life is funny and crazy and you just have to live it and own it.
We must experience everything, not just the good, but all of it: The pain, the degradation, the horror, the sadness, it makes us whole. It makes us People of Substance, not flighty untouched children.
Then we can know the world and when we know the world… The world is ours.
No Ragrets. Know what I’m saying?
Not even a single letter.
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