I HAD NEVER SEEN DEATH BEFORE. IT WAS DISTURBING.

There didn't appear to be anything wrong with him when I found him, apart that he was lying face down on the toilet floor in a shallow pool. He must be paralytic, I thought at first, agonizing at the stain in his Jag shirt and Country Road jeans which would be the consequence. He looked young, 20 at the oldest, fairly tall, slim, with short brown hair: a typical patron of the club. When he hadn't moved after a minute of observation I began concerned. I knelt over him pausing to note his exquisite ethnic necklace, realized he wasn't breathing. The impact was immediate.

Fuck, who is this guy?

Yothu Yindi's Treaty expanded into a few moments of painful cacophony and then retreated. Someone had come in behind me and obviously now regretted it. I couldn't say a word as he paced to the body, paled, theorized about foul play. Like me, he ended up standing mesmerized, mumbling softly: <<Fuck, who is this guy?>>

After a while a crowd began accumulating in the Men's Room as each visitor, no doubt on an innocent journey to the trough, or possibly just looking for a lost friend, became trapped by the spectacle on the floor. At one stage someone said <<Nobody touch his boots!>> and I understood that they were Doc Martins, a bold alternative statement compared with more mainstream Jag shirt and Country Road jeans. More puzzling, the sprawl of his arms revealed a pair of Nike mitts, a ghastly white on white.

<<What happened here?>> asked the 30th person into the toilets, curiously a woman. <<This guy's a walking contradiction.>>

<<Either that or he>> someone else chipped in <<dresses in the dark.>> The toilet was your standard early 1990s advertising hell: posters in gaudy colors selling all kinds of wares from ribbed condoms to love scents engineered from the pheromones of endangered species. <<Hey look>> the aforementioned woman said. <<There's a mark on his wrist. There, above his bracelet.>>

<<It looks like a logo. A rippled sphere of some kind.>>

<<Is there a club in town with a stamp like that?>>

As I teetered forward for a final look before making way for the police, I was intrigued by one final detail. He was wearing Hedione #5 aftershave, the latest Glam offering. Its fruity, transcendent aroma mixed with the earthier stench of cigarette smoke and piss to make a truly discordant comment. FUCK, WHO IS THIS GUY??

CASSIUS CROON (c)opyright Rob Sullivan 1996-2023. Contact the author for all your criticisms and feedbacks.