Mayhem

by Matthew Thompson

  I still write to Rachel’s sister. They’re twins. I used to take the kids out all the time. I was the adopted uncle. Even when I got out in 2008 I wasn’t in a relationship with Rachel but I’d still take them out and actually bought one of them, the boy, a motorbike, a trail bike better than mine. I spent fucking 1600 on mine and his bike cost 1700. Even in 2011, I went around there and caught up with them and said hello and all that.

  Out of all of them Jess is probably the one I connected with, that I’m fond of, but I just blew, basically. She was a lot younger than me and just wasn’t ready. That’s why I said, ‘You need to go out.’ ’Cos she was a virgin at the time I met her and I kept her that way. I’d just give her a lick and that.

  See, I had all sorts of different sheilas so I didn’t penetrate her for a number of years. I used to say to myself, ‘I’m just licking where no one else has been and keep it like that.’ It’d drive her crazy, and if I want to fuck someone I’d just fuck one of the sluts. I kept her intact for years.

  Then when I got out in 2008 we spent the night together. That was all right. That was good.

  66. DOG DAYS

  2 APRIL 2008: RELEASED ON PAROLE

  Out in Footscray on parole getting welfare payments sorted I run into The Footy Show’s Sam Newman and his crew doing Street Talk interviews.

  Sam asks why I was in jail and I mention having gone to catch up with somebody but they weren’t there so I left a bullet on a counter.

  ‘You didn’t shoot anyone, did you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t shoot no one.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you said you shot someone.’

  ‘No. I was going to.’

  As we’re going our separate ways, cameras still rolling, I ask if I’m going to make the cut.

  ‘We just take all this shit back to the studio and someone else does it,’ says Sam. ‘But I’m sure you’ll be put on.’

  I tell him: ‘If you don’t put it on I’ll shoot ya next time I see ya.’

  ‘I can assure you, sir, you’ll be on,’ he says, cracking up at my cheekiness.

  The Footy Show airs the footage, but the parole board doesn’t laugh. Nearly breach me for it.

  *

  Close friends that I have known for twenty-odd years give me a job in their concreting business. They want to keep me occupied and see me stay out of trouble. I’m humbled by their warmth, and they do everything they can to make me feel accepted. But standing around on jobs, I feel like a right gronk – totally awkward. Four decades on this earth and I’m a charity case. I’m just slowing them up. And it’s no secret who I am: what I am. Wish I could forget. I’m smoking enough pot to take the edge off the memories. Maybe ‘memories’ isn’t even the right word ’cos the experiences are right here, right now, sharp enough to cut through time. ‘Get him, get him, get him!’ Slash-slash-slash-slash-slash.

  I need to withdraw. I stop working.

  *

  One bright spot is that my daughter and I are bonding well, thanks to overnight access. I love her so much. My girlfriend, Silvia, has a daughter of her own and is good with her, too.

  Kylie is extremely jealous of Silvia and tries everything she can to get us together in a relationship, but I am not interested at all.

  With no warning, Kylie moves to Queensland, taking our girl with her. It’s a package deal now, I learn: if I want my daughter, then I have to take Kylie, too.

  I was already lost. Now I’m in freefall. I tell Kylie I’m not interested in either of them.

  *

  It’s all too much but I have a newly appointed psychologist who isn’t experienced enough. He’s too raw. Too much like a bull in a china shop. I have to smoke pot before the sessions just to slow it down, to step back.

  Seeing him is part of my parole obligations but I give him the flick and press on with drugs instead – coke and pot, up and down, on and off: all at the same time. I’m stroboscopic.

  *

  The ranger seizes a fucking beautiful pup of mine, Crystal, from Barry’s place. So I ring the Brimbank City Council and order the ranger to free my fucking dog.

  ‘I’ve had Crystal since she was six weeks old,’ I tell him. ‘I love her as my own child and I want her back.’ Having done my homework, I’m able to refer to the ranger’s kids by name. Maybe this will make him come good: ‘How would you like it if someone seized them? Do we have to do a swap – one for one?’

  There’s a bit of tension on the street these days and I don’t much like being out and about but I’m not getting anywhere with this fuckhead. So I tell him that I didn’t want to have to do this, that these are dangerous times for me, but I’m coming down to get my pup. ‘And the police better not fucking be there.’

  Runty and I jump in my car with a couple of mates and park across the road from the council works at Keilor. Should a crew try to jump me, I’ve got a couple bumbags packed with basically non-lethal weapons including a taser, capsicum spray, and a pengun.

  Whoa, black van swerving in!? Black tactical uniforms shouting and guns all at me and I’m seized: thrown on my face.

  67. BATHED IN LOVE

  2008–11: CHARLOTTE UNIT AND BEYOND

  After being arrested by the SOG on 18 December, Chris returns to Port Phillip Prison.

  CHRIS:

  On reception back into custody I break down in tears in front of the prison staff.

  I hate it here. I can’t assimilate out there. I hate it here. Can’t assimilate out there. Hate myself. Hate them. Hate and despair.

  And just to make sure I am even more profoundly screwed up when the time comes for my next release, they make me serve the entire three-year term in management – half of that in solitary confinement.

  That’ll fix me.

  DEPT OF JUSTICE VIC MEMO

  FRIDAY, 19 DECEMBER 2008

  As you are all aware, Chris is back at PPP.

  During interview Chris presented as very flat and stated on numerous occasions that he had ‘had enough’ and was ‘filthy’ that the police didn’t shoot him yesterday. Claims he doesn’t fit in on the outside and says the only life he knows now is being locked in tiny concrete rooms. States he is refusing to eat and wants to fade away and die and his only interest is in how long it takes. Says he is going to remain non compliant with orders and that Sentence Management can go and %na@# themselves.

  While I’m remanded to the void of Port Phillip Prison’s Charlotte Unit, Kylie decides to return back to Melbourne to patch things up.

  She books a ‘relationship visit’, using our girl as a bridge. ‘You have to bond with your daughter,’ she says.

  I really look forward to the visits with Charlize. She has grown up so much since I last saw her some six or so months ago – before losing all control of my life – something I often remind Kylie that she contributed to by taking Charlize from me.

  She swears that she will never allow it to happen again.

  ‘What? You want to get close and when it doesn’t suit you you’ll run away again?’ I say to her. I’m not going to let it happen. ‘I’d rather walk away now than be emotionally destroyed by you doing it again.’

  Kylie swears it won’t happen again. She says she accepts not taking up the allowed relationship visit.

  Silvia often says, ‘Why does she have to come in for? I am your girl not her.’

  Which is absolutely true, as I say to Kylie on countless occasions: ‘It ain’t about you – it’s about Charlize.’

  28 JULY 2009:

  TRANSFER TO SCARBOROUGH NORTH UNIT, PORT PHILLIP PRISON

  There are thousands of prisoners in Victoria with whom I have no history, no trouble, no issues, but it always seems that if it’s not solitary – war of the universe against the lone soul – it’s into the arena to face the rotating cast of disturbed clowns that the system’s Major Offenders Unit keeps circulating together.

  So I’m moved to a management unit controlled by one of Gavin Preston’s associates – a man with a great reputation for pr
ison violence.

  I don’t tell authorities of the threat to my life because I don’t do that. Instead, I make improvised body armour, strapping magazines to my upper body to protect against stabbings.

  Also equipping myself with an improvised chemical agent to use as mace, I walk alone into the enemy’s unit.

  Within three minutes it erupts and I’m using that chemical agent as if my life depends upon it. Which it does.

  So now I’m tipped to Banksia in Barwon.

  TRANSFER TO BANKSIA UNIT, BARWON PRISON

  I’m in total machine mode: training, training, training, harder, harder, harder. I hit the boxing bag with such ferocity that it reverberates through the wing, blow after blow, hammering it for 20 or 25 unrelenting minutes of 110 punches per minute. Ditching normal routines I slam it thousands of times in unexpected rhythms, irregular piston combinations, every single strike shattering jaws, all the jaws, all the fucking teeth that have ever come to grind me. I destroy everything.

  Drill complete, I now load food into the microwave, set it for five minutes, shower, dress, eat, pluck a flower from the prison officers’ garden on the way to the visitors centre, proceed through a two-stage strip-search, advance to my daughter, embrace her and at last feel bathed in love.

  During my time at Banksia, I make cards for my daughter, paint them and irritate the staff by cutting up an expensive book about Arabian horses so I can have pictures for her.

  I’m transferred back to Charlotte at Port Phillip for harassing Hugo Rich, aka Olaf Dietrich, one of Chopper Read’s mutts from all those years ago in Pentridge.

  Kylie visits every week now, bringing my daughter; I have established a great bond and relationship with her by this stage. Even the prison officers comment on it.

  I don’t speak to Kylie, though, unless it is an important matter about my child’s welfare or schooling. Otherwise, entire visits are devoted to playing and interacting with my daughter.

  I’ve always plucked flowers from the officers’ garden on the way to the visitors centre, hiding them up the sleeve of my overalls to play a magic trick for her, getting empty foam cups and saying abracadabra, waving my hands around, predicting colours of the flowers that will magically appear, and then letting them drop into the cups. It gets complicated when she demands her choice of colours – those days I just disappoint her.

  But best of all our time together, she wants us full-on running around together, up and down the kids slide, having races and rolling around wrestling and doing cartwheels, hopscotch and star jumps. She wants to jump up and down on me and she really wants Wizzy Dizzies! When I spin her it draws in all the other kids who are so often ignored by their parents. They line up and plead for a turn.

  She always leaves the visits with the flowers hidden in foam cups – or at least she does after staff point out signs warning that damaging the flora can result in ‘Termination of visit’.

  She loves seeing me and I love it even more.

  *

  As my release date gets closer I don’t know what happens.

  I do know what happens.

  Everything that’s unhinged in me but has been held in place by the stark, hard routine of prison starts vibrating so fiercely that now it’s not held in place. Not really.

  Because I can’t cope out there.

  In 30 years of jail I have been a laundry billet and a unit billet, done a little kitchen work twenty years ago and that’s about it.

  As a kid in the early 1980s I was a store packer at Coles and a carpenter’s assistant for my dad. Didn’t finish Year 8.

  No work skills. No social skills.

  What I warned about when campaigning in NSW is coming true for me again. I’m gonna to fail again. I’m gonna fail.

  And as I inch towards the disaster, I spend most of the day lying in a little room. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Corrections Victoria. Corrections NSW. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

  9 MARCH 2011:

  MAKESHIFT SWING FROM TIER

  With a bedsheet I fashion a makeshift swing, unfurl it from the top landing of my management unit and start swinging back and forth whilst complaining about not being ready for release.

  The general manager cuts me down and my plea for help adjusting to the outside world ahead of my release is ignored and they tip me into an anti-suicide solitary confinement observation cell at the Charlotte Unit at Port Phillip Prison.

  So I continue my protest at the lack of preparation and help. I am classified as a ‘major offender’ and as ‘high risk’, but I receive the opposite of ‘major’ assistance and a ‘high’ degree of training and rehabilitation.

  I receive the empty room. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Inching towards release.

  11 MARCH 2011: CAT SCAN

  I run at the perspex interior door of the cell, crashing my head into it.

  And collapse.

  Off to St Vincent’s.

  ‘BEHAVIOUR APPEARS OPENLY MANIPULATIVE DUE TO INABILITY TO NEGOTIATE A MORE SATISFACTORY PATHWAY TO RELEASE, WHILE HIS NEED FOR SOME SORT OF SUPPORTIVE PRE-RELEASE PROGRAM APPEARS REAL.’

  They coax me out of the observation cell for a visit from my daughter – she turns five next month! – and then transfer me to another unit and then back to the punishment unit of Charlotte.

  I have twelve weeks before release and I’m going crazy. I start making shit-bombs again. It starts with this fucking putrid grub who stabbed his own 2-year-old daughter to death to get at her mother. I fill a milk carton with faeces and piss and when I’m passing his cell door I place it under the lip and stomp. It sprays everywhere, covering not just him but me in shit, too, but I don’t give a fuck.

  I shit-bomb anyone with a sordid past, hitting four targets in one day, all down the spine of the Charlotte Unit. The staff go for me but I sidestep ’em and plant another under a door – stomp!

  The staff stopped issuing me milk in a carton and instead serve it in foam cups, but this proves no deterrent at all as I relentlessly focus on one particular target. Eventually they move him to a safe area upstairs.

  Usually I don’t attend my Major Offenders Unit review in protest at the absence of rehabilitation, but now I go to one wearing a t-shirt reading, ‘Shit Happens.’ It’s confiscated.

  I’m primed to explode.

  Leading up to my release I seek assistance through the prison system to find accommodation around Melbourne – close to my daughter. Unfortunately there is nothing available in Melbourne – just a handful of two-week residencies in a choice of Seaford, Wangaratta and the Ballarat region.

  Bitterly disappointed, I discuss them with Kylie. Given my record, I’d hoped for far more post-release help; they know stability in accommodation is a critical element in reducing recidivism.

  Kylie and I agree that taking up a fortnight somewhere outside Melbourne is unsuitable. She’s going to let me sleep on a couch at her flat until I am able to sort something proper. This will allow me to spend more time with my child.

  I find it awkward being alone now, my self-worth and confidence is shot, and I’m totally dependent on the mother of my child to help get me through the transition from jail, sadly.

  Released straight from isolation into the community, I walk through the gates wearing another ‘Eat Shit & Die’ t-shirt.

  68. GETTIN’ HECTIC

  25 SEPTEMBER 2011: RELEASED FROM JAIL

  I get picked up by Smiles. He takes me to Coffee Addiction in Niddrie, just across the road from La Porchetta where the owner once killed a bloke by shooting him twice in the head with an illegal firearm. Self-defence, it was ruled.

  Anyway, it’s Sunday morning and we’re all catching up; we’re having fucking breakfast, coffee, all that sort of stuff, and Smiles goes: ‘By the way, you’ve got issues.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ll let Bill tell ya. He’s coming down to catch up with ya.’

  Bill arrives. He says, ‘Oh Chris, you better fucking tool up. Gavin’s trying to find out where you are; he’s go
ing to try and fucking take you out. You better tool up; you better strap up. He’s looking for ya.’ All this sort of shit.

  What the fuck? The first day I get out I hear this shit. I’m trying to have breakfast and eggs and I’m focused on going to Luna Park this afternoon with my daughter and people are telling me I’ve got to watch it; he’s going to do this. What the fuck?

  It doesn’t settle me. Really, I don’t want to hear this shit. I want to relax the first day. You know?

  It starts getting me paranoid, worried, all that sort of stuff; my life’s in danger; same with those around me, too – what the fuck? Probably, maybe, Bill’s hoping I’ll tool up, that maybe I’ll be proactive and neutralise this cunt, because he’s got issues – he doesn’t tell me he’s got issues with Gavin; he just throws me up in the ruck.

  I’ve just got out of isolation, solitary confinement, which makes you very paranoid and very confrontational, and they know what sort of person I am. What do I fucking do? Do I walk away from this or confront it, or engage? Well I engage, okay, so they’re hoping for me to tidy things up.

  So I take my daughter to Luna Park but I can’t conceal from her the worry I’ve got. Instead of being happy with my child I am overloading with the concern and totally struggling with this foreign world.

  My first night free I’m fucking doing countersurveillance. I’ve got a fucking car parked up the street, across the road from where Kylie is, sitting off, doing fucking countersurveillance in case Gavin knows where Kylie lives and sends someone. It wouldn’t be hard to know where Kylie is because she big-notes that she’s with me or that she’s seeing me – she likes to make it look a lot deeper than it is because she doesn’t want to look funny, silly. I keep saying, ‘Listen, Kylie, you’re the mother of my child – that’s it. We’re not in a relationship.’ But she tries to present it like that to everybody because that’s what she’s craving: to be a part of this – what the fuck, I don’t know what to call it – criminal dynasty. You know what I’m saying?