‘Tiger’ and Flanagan. “Tiger’s got two Gods. One is love, the other is a voice in his head that’s forever telling him what to do.”

Tiger rings me nearly every day, has for 40 years. We worked together in the early ‘80s, him as a photographer, me as a journalist. He blew his brain apart with magic mushrooms and then saturated it with ganga. His brain snapped shut in a few places, mostly to do with the word “God”. Tiger blesses people in pubs and gets told to “fuck off”, whereupon God tells him that person needs blessing again. Getting punched and kicked hasn’t deterred him.

I don’t know how many times Tiger and I went out on jobs together in what he calls “the old days”. Maybe 20, maybe more. He remembers them like other people remember episodes of “Fawlty Towers”. We did have fun at times. On long car trips, I made up films and assigned Tiger and myself roles in them. No stranger to alternative realities, Tiger was always on for a wander through any imaginative landscape I conjured up.

Once when Tiger was locked up, he asked me to come and see him. He took me round the unit. The inmates were fused to the eyeballs with sedatives. With each and every one we met, Tiger pointed to me and said, LOOK WHO’S HERE?! None of them, after focusing on me in a dazed confused way, had any idea. I have a friend in Melbourne who thinks this is the funniest story. Every time he sees me he shouts, LOOK WHO’S HERE!

It takes energy when Tiger rings. Sooner or later, he says something like, God wouldn’t lie to me, would he Marty? If you don’t answer fast, he thinks you’re sending him subliminal messages. So you have to say something, anything. I usually say: “Go for a walk. Get out of your head! Take your camera, photograph nature.” He rang one bloke 17 times in one day. That fella no longer takes his calls. Seven or eight would be his record with me.

But occasionally Tiger says things that pierce my armour. Once, I lost it with him – one of my daughters had a big drama running, and he was bothering me with the same old questions, and I shouted: “Why do I do this? Why do I take your calls? You never do anything I say.” He interrupted me. “Because we’ve got the same religion, Marty. We believe in humility and kindness.”

Over the past few months, I’ve started getting days where I get no words. For a writer, that’s like a fisherman getting no fish. More recently, I had one whole week with no words. I felt strangely empty – like I’d floated out to sea in a boat and was looking back at the coastline of my life. Tiger wanted to meet up which didn’t feel at all like what I needed, so I had the idea that I’d take him out for lunch to a little restaurant run by Thai Buddhists on the edge of Launceston’s Prince’s Square.

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My favourite colour is sunlit green. Prince’s Square with its giant oaks and lush grass does sunlit green as well as Claude Monet – its brilliance was blasting through the window into this quiet place with a Buddhist vibe that’s also one of Launceston’s early houses. I tell Tiger he can have what he likes. He gives the menu a good looking over and asks if it’s OK if he has the green curry with duck. Have what you want, Tiger.

I’m not expecting what follows – Tiger loves his duck green curry. Loves it like an art collector loves a rare vase. With a sort of reverence. This is delicious, Marty. It occurs to me that Tiger may not have been to a restaurant for some time. He’s had a rough six months with an array of afflictions including a malfunctioning kidney and pissing blood. He was in hospital with a catheter up his cock when he got Covid.

I watch Tiger eat his green curry. We’ve talked almost every night on the phone for 40 years, we’ve exhausted our conversational possibilities, so I think of a question I’ve never asked him before – what’s the maddest thing you’ve ever done? Drink hydrochloric acid, he says. For 30 seconds, he couldn’t breathe. For months, he couldn’t eat solids. Then he tells me a story about being out in the bush, seeing a tiger snake coiled up on a log, and going across and patting the snake’s head. Who told Tiger to pat the snake on the head? God did.

Tiger’s got two Gods. One is love, the other is a voice in his head that’s forever telling him what to do, including what he has to do if he wants to get married. Tiger wants to get married. Most of what God says to me is bullshit, isn’t it Marty? Yes, I say. A hard life, Tiger’s. He tells me again how good the green curry is. His joy passes from him to me like a lighthouse beam. He looks at the drinks menu and asks if he can have the chocolate drink with ice cream in it. Have what you like, I say.

He’s parked two blocks away. The walk here was a bit hard, he says. He’s not a complainer, so I walk him back to his car. He looks like he was drawn by Van Gogh, bent, scruffy, moving like an old wooden puppet, stiff and heavy. Once he was a junior pole vault champion who made it to the national titles.

His car has cracked seating and gleaming patches where earlier coats of paint shine through. He’s no sooner in the car than he hits the button on his dilapidated sound system and out comes Paul Kelly’s “To Her Door”, loud but not too loud, one of my favourites, catapulting me into a moment that’s total and strong and vivid. I’m playing air guitar and singing, Tiger’s laughing and saying, “Just like the old days, Marty”, and I’ve got words again.