Housesharing, narcotraficantes and piano removalists

Many years ago I was house-sharing in one of Australia’s capital cities* (far, far away from Melbourne) in one of its more funky suburbs* with a friend of mine, let’s call her Bea, when The Mater decided that it was important for me to have a creative outlet and so she sent to me, via road freight, my upright iron-framed grand piano which was in a storage unit in North Melbourne. At the precise moment the piano arrived, after its tedious roadtrip from the south, Bea and I were performing a cleansing ritual in the house with the use of a sage smudge stick I had pulled together from my herb garden. I felt a bad “vibe” in the house, in particular in the staircase, and wanted to rid the property of bad spirits and figured the sage smudge stick might help. (Actually, my imagination was bored so it went into overdrive, concocting all sorts of fanciful supernatural tales).

Anyhow, when the piano removalists arrived with my upright iron-framed grand piano, there was – sitting on the coffee table – a bowl full of half burned sage. All quite innocent. However, the vessel of dried herbs caught the eye of one of the piano removalists (let’s call him Joe*) who, I later discovered, believed that it was not sage in the bowl on the coffee table, but rather marijuana and thus he formed the idea that I was a dope-head. LOL. As such Joe immediately became attracted to our household because, as I discovered later, he was a narcotraficante. He saw Bea and I as potential customers. Potential dope-head fiends! Potential smoking buddies! Argh!

Now at this point, I should mention to you that Bea had specifically moved to this funky suburb in one of Australia’s capital cities that was far, far away from her hometown elsewhere in Australia with the sole intention of escaping her previous life as a “speed” fiend. Thus far she was clean (because she had no narcotraficante contacts in our new suburb…  and I was a rather squeaky clean gal!) and we had a fun and happy house-sharing life together. However, Joe took an immediate liking to Bea and the next thing I knew they were best of friends. Well, more than best of friends. And that wasn’t sage-smudge-stick smoke wafting out of Bea’s bedroom. And so I discovered that the piano removalist was moonlighting as a narcotraficante… or rather the narcotraficante was moonlighting as a piano removalist.

And so upon recalling those hilarious times on the frontier of the drug industry and the rapid disintegration of my relationship with Bea and the destruction of our once happy and tranquil house-share I resolved never, ever again to permit my upright iron-framed grand piano to travel by road freight.

Oh, and I’ll never, ever, ever house-share ever, ever again.

*names of persons and places have been changed in accordance with Australian privacy laws and to prevent the possibility of being drawn into a long and painful lawsuit, which could ultimately render me bankrupt and lead me to become a long-term resident of Deer Park Women’s Correctional Centre. Oh, so dramatic!