thinking through my badness

(written yesterday)

France approaches. I’m in Melbourne, on Jess’s couch. It’s raining and the taste of peppermint tea lingers.

Tomorrow I’m back in Sydney. I’m now doing work I brought with me – something I needed to do this weekend, but of course de-prioritised for all the fun stuff. For conversation, eating, drinking, etc. I love my Melbourne friends, without whom I could not say I love Melbourne.

Things happened this weekend that I didn’t anticipate. It seems too easy (and problematic) to blame the drugs and alcohol. Though I think they contributed to my lack of inhibitions. Last night, with the drugs wearing off, I was angry with myself. I wondered why I needed to engage in what’s considered to be self-destructive behaviours. There was no questioning at that point, last night, that this was another case of me ‘acting out’.

But now I question this idea of ‘acting out’. What does this mean? Could it be that I’m confusing inhibitions with morals? That my lack of inhibitions (enabling me to engage in sexual excursions that I would otherwise rationally avoid) represent a lack of morality? But since when have I been into morals anyway?

I tend to distance myself from traditional versions of morality. Promiscuity, drug-taking, and all the other supposedly dangerous stuff can be good, right? How else do we learn about our limits, our desires, our social positioning, if we don’t find ourselves in potentially destructive situations? But maybe destruction is too negative a word. Maybe it’s more like re-construction – a process of renovation, not simply falling apart. Which we (I mean, I) sometimes feel that I’m doing.

I’m not going to describe the events of Friday night / Saturday morning except to say that they were both hilarious and sad, exhilarating and trivial. It depends on the position from which I tell the story, or who I tell. It’s certainly not a story for Mum. Yet it got a good reception yesterday when shared with a friend in a Carlton cafe, and another in that Lygon St restaurant with a Ferrari suspended from the ceiling. Nevertheless, it’s always the abridged version – more tidy and clean than the experience itself.

Perhaps, in a vulnerable state like yesterday’s ‘come down’, reasons for my behaviours are sought and then found in the concept of ‘lacks’ – holes in my self that need to be located, fixed, sealed off from a world of dangerous penetrations. This, and all the other confusions around sex and drugs that I’ve been immersed in since birth, is always lurking in the shadows. Always ready to arrest me and make me feel guilty, bad, corrupted.

Thinking myself bad is the easy option. Thinking through this badness is not so easy. It would be easier to apologise and say it will never happen again. But to whom am I apologising? I haven’t broken any agreements. I’m just applying somebody else’s moral codes to my situation, to tell me that I’ve failed myself.

Danger is exhilarating. I’m reminded of this each time I feel a sting of pain in my slightly damaged wrist. Or when I catch sight of scratches on the surface of my skin, unsure how they got there. But maybe that’s the point – we can’t always know how things get there. That’s what makes them interesting. That’s what keeps me writing, thinking, feeling my way around.

France is approaching. My conversations over the course of the week keep pointing in that direction, so now I’m more aware then ever that I’ll soon be in another unfamiliar place. It’s a bit scary, but it’s good.