The story starts, as any good story does, with us being totally off our faces at a friend's house. We'd been clubbing, and we were "recovering" at Kelly's apartment in St Kilda. Club 1002, it was called, coz it was where all the randoms went back to after the clubs shut.

This dude we know, Little Daz, brought back a friend of his. Shane, I think his name was. Anyways, he was the red-headed gormless bastard; straight down the line and clearly uncomfortable being round faggots. Especially faggots that were so messed up and in his face.

So I did what I always did in those situations... try to make him even more uncomfortable by making him think I was hitting on him.

(If Michael, my gay bestie, were able to interject here, he'd say that I did that coz I really was hitting on them, but I just need to counter that with: he was festy.)

I started slow. I remember exclaiming, "My! Those are big feet you have. Dot dot dot."

I upped the ante a bit by hovering around him - perhaps too close - and being very interested in the scattered bullshit this guy was spouting. I totally can't remember my other little lines, though I do have a memory of them being particularly clever. To me, at least.

My piece de la resistance - he was sitting on the couch, so I was going to walk over, punch him in the arm, and say, "Now you've been faggot bashed." (See what I mean by clever?)

So I walked over, punched him in the arm, and went, "Now you've been..."

And I didn't finish the sentence, coz as I pulled my fist away, he pulled out a knife and stabbed my hand.

Turns out the dude had meandered in the kitchen a short time earlier to get the sharpest object which could be used to retaliate against any future faggoty outbursts. And this was no accident - it all played out in slow mo to me. As I pulled away, he got the knife from under his lap, and made one motion to stab me but missed, so repeated - and suceeded quite admirably.

Now, I'm a bleeder. And boy, did I put in a fine performance that day. As my whole forearm became covered in blood, I stood over the sink and screamed at the guy, "WHO THE FUCK STABS PEOPLE?" Or something as equally poignant, as you do when a knife has pierced your skin with a delightful little 'pop'.

Course, I was still off my face, so in between bouts of screaming at the guy, I turned to the person who was helping me dress my wound and made the cut of my skin start talking, like a demented puppet.

So, I'm bleeding and screaming and playing puppetry of the perforation, and the dude starts having a panic attack. Gasping for air, he turns blue and starts rolling round on the carpet. Another nursey chick jumps on him, takes his top off to help him breath and tries to console him with, "Breath Shane! It's OK, breath!"

Meanwhile I'm ferried into the bedroom, while this dude is talked out of his anxious state. Turns out I'd uncovered some deeply repressed homo-related feelings that sent him over the edge. I had to walk back out there, after a short period of time, and act like everything's OK because he was really quite fucked up about the whole affair. So I did. I'd stopped bleeding by then at any rate.

The guy was soon taken home. We never saw him again. Though I'll always think of him and his big feet whenever I look at the two centimetre scar on the back on my right hand.