ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
“Ohhhhh govern me harder, daddy!” he said.
Tom Reece is standing outside the Lord Kidman Hotel at closing time. In his hand, an iPhone he’s using to unlock a Lime scooter. It’s only a 10-minute journey home for him, by electric pony. It’s one he’s done a hundred times before.
His friends tell him to walk or at least get a DiDi. It’s a 45-minute stroll in the summer night air or a $23 ride in a Kia. They’ve been drinking since knockoff. Tom laughs as the scooter beeps to life. The little headlight illuminates the footpath heading south.
“Suck me off, lefties!” he said, disappearing off into the darkness. His greasy hair flapping in the dry desert breeze. A smile on his face as his peripheral vision begins to blur as if he’s entering warp speed.
He was a 29-year-old account executive at media agency Whistle & Peg. A coworker who saw Tom ride off on the scooter that night in December last year is still blaming himself for what happened.
Shortly before 1 am, Tom was thrown from the scooter as it hurtled down McDonald Street. Witnesses say he was leaning forward down the hill, his chin resting on the handlebar to aid wind resistance. He developed the death wobbles as the scooter approached 50. He wasn’t wearing a helmet.
As the police made their way to Tom’s parents’ home in Betoota Heights, Tom’s organs were on their way down a hospital corridor. Off to their new owner.
Next cab off the organ rank is Warren Tullhuntly, who’s in the market for some liver.
“They tell me more people are riding around on those scooters and bikes without a helmet,” he said.
“Sad but good for people like me, I guess. For people in my situation. Someone even said the police don’t care anymore. Good for personal liberties, good for people who need organs, like me,”
“It takes two seconds to put a helmet on. It only takes a surgeon 20 minutes to get your heart and lungs out and into an Esky. I’m not Derryn Hinch, I’m not going to waste my new organ by soaking it in cask shiraz like my old one, I’m going to try and contribute to society.”
More to come.
