ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
As he sat, watching the clouds swirl atop his room temperature tankard of Carlton Draught, disgraced former MP Daryl Maguire wondered if he was pissed enough to start talking about his feelings.
He was home in Wagga over the weekend with a cloud hanging over his own head after a telling week at ICAC.
North Wagga, in Wagga circles, is known as Wagga’s Tuscany.
Which is where Daryl was on Sunday afternoon, sitting in the front bar of the Black Swan watching the Wallabies miss tackles.
It was about three o’clock, when he looked up at his mate and opened his mouth.
“Fucking Christ,” he said.
“It’s been a tough week, Joey, I’ll fucken tell you that for free, mate. Jesus wept.”
Joey knew what Daryl was talking about. But Joey wasn’t there to help Daryl navigate through this part of his life, he was there to buy him corn chips and cheap alcohol while they discuss contact sport.
“Yeah mate, it’s no good. Hey, take a load of that number 11 in the All Blacks. He’s fucken huge! Look at the legs on him! He’d be able to pull a car door off it’s bloody hinges!”
Daryl nodded.
“Yeah, he sure is a big boy, Joe,” he said.
Then Joe started shouting as Bill came back to the table with a tray of Cafe Patron shots.
“Get one of these into ya, Daryl, you sad cunt,” he said.
A nip of Mexican sump oil disappeared down Maguire’s throat.
“Have another one, mate. Fuck me, who’s kidnapped the old Daryl and replaced him with this soft cock! Have another shot, mate!”
He had another shot.
“That’s a good boy, now what’s up with these Wallabies!”
But it was becoming too much, the room was spinning and it only got worse when Daryl got up. He threw a hand out to right himself against the wall.
“I need to take a piss,” he said to the wall.
Like a blind man learning the layout of a new room, Daryl palmed his way to the toilet.
But as soon as he cracked the door, he couldn’t hold it down any longer. A thick stream of brown goo shot out from his mouth, down his sleeve, onto the door and down all over his new trainers.
“Oh shit,” he said once the tail of the vomit had slithered form his mouth.
He heaved again, this time completely inside the toilets.
His once-white Reeboks were now covered in a mix of Patron, draught beer and mashed corn chips.
And in the silence he just stood there.
“Fuck,” he said softly.
More to come.
