Chapter 12

Once upon a time, I had faith and hope in humanity. Somehow I believed that eventually everything would be all right and if only the general population could see through the smog clouds of societal crap, they'd realize what they had to do so as everyone would at least have the chance to go to sleep at night in a bed of their own on a full stomach. Blind faith, I guess - one of the few things I took with me when I walked out of 7 years of strict Catholic education. That, alcoholism, guilt and a perverse respect for all things illegal, immoral or fattening, preferably in some combination.

Once upon a time, I was a member of Amnesty International. I went to the meetings, read the urgent actions, wrote reams of letters to Asian and African dictators (why is it that the best food comes from countries where human rights is a jail cell shared with 25 instead of 30?), and sent faxes to the Chinese embassy every anniversary of the Tianemen massacre. I went on the peace marches, the protests against the gulf war, French nuclear testing, whatever the cause of the week was. I wore tie dyed clothes, recycled as much as my consumerist-consumed mind and body would permit. I ripped open my anus on recycled, unbleached, environmentally-approved toilet paper because I believed that my ass would recover but the forests might not. I used roll-on instead of spray-on, stopped using Gillette, boycotted products that were tested on animals, chanted rehashed rhetoric right out of the sixties, man, I even wrote letters to the local glad-rag that masqueraded as a newspaper, saying "Give Peace a Chance".

I made paper cranes and hung them up everywhere so as we could never forget what assholes the Yankees were when they decided to blow the fuck out of two Japanese cities, frying those Nipponese butts to hell and back, even though Japan was on the brink of surrender and starvation. I sent money to UNICEF and I starved myself silly for 40 hours plus because I wanted to share the sufferings of the Ethiopians and raise more money for World Vision.

I bought Farm-Fresh-Free-Range eggs 'cos I hated the thought of chickens biting each others' genitals off, just so I could eat an omelette on a Sunday morning. I wore a T-shirt with Marx's face on it, handed out pamphlets urging action not apathy and I picketed the offices of politicians who favoured dumping toxic waste in the backyards of the outer suburbs that were filled by people too broke to bribe their local members.

Yeah, once upon a time, I did all this and more. I insisted on a vegetarian Christmas dinner because there was no way I was eating any piece of rotting animal flesh in honour of the birth of a dead bastard whose greatest claim to fame was turning water into wine, (God bless his soul) and who I didn't believe in anyway. I looked for synthetic instead of leather, took boxes instead of bags, drank water instead of Coke, returned my styrofoam to the clerks at McDonalds urging them to reuse it. I reduced my effluent output, cut down on my water usage by washing only twice a week and I walked instead of riding in an overrated glamorized carbon-monoxide machine.

Why? Because once upon a time, I thought I could make a difference.

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