The novel begins and ends with a hangover. Ari seems to be caught within this cycle of debauchery; he does not want to break it because it is his way of escaping from reality and his responsibilities.
Instead, he chooses to adopt a nihilistic world view (at only 19 years old, he wants to believe he has it all figured out) because he cannot find a place where he truly belongs. Half Greek and half Australian, he is well familiar with both worlds but does not want to fully embrace either of them.
He also does not seem to know exactly where he belongs sexually. He has a gay friend called Johnny, who dresses up as a drag queen called Toula but Ari seems to be in denial: “Johnny is Johnny to me, he can be Toula to everybody else.” On the other hand, even though Ari frequently has sex with random men, he is also sleeping with women when he is drunk or stoned. Interestingly, he is attracted to “real men” instead of openly gay people.
He cannot rely on his parents for guidance as well, because the family seems rather dysfunctional and volatile. There are times when the family members are shouting obscenities at each other, and not long after that, they express their support.
All this confusion leads to aggressive behavior and hatred, and he finds it easier to define himself by listing what he is not: “I’m not Australian, I’m not Greek, I’m not anything. I’m not a worker, I’m not a student, I’m not an artist, I’m not a junkie, I’m not a conversationalist, I’m not an Australian, not a wog, not anything. I’m not left wing, right wing, centre, left of centre, right of Genghis Khan. I don’t vote, I don’t demonstrate, I don’t do Charity. What I am is a runner. Running away from a thousand and one things that people say you have to be or should want to be.” Music and drugs offer an easy way out, so he embraces both.
He blames capitalism for the current state of society where people have become braindead, watching TV in their suburban homes after working all day: “The rich wog fortresses are the border towns between the stinking rich pricks and the vast expanses of bored housewives and their drugged-out children who populate the outer Eastern suburbs. The men, the greying men in their ugly business shirts, shuffle paper around all day, have guilty sex in toilets or at the brothels on the way to the station, and return home every night to drop dead in front of the television. Television rules. School, work, shopping, sex, are distractions to the central activity of the Eastern suburbs: flicking the channels on the remote control.”
Ari, on the other hand, finds himself in the “sewer” of society, an underclass that includes everyone who does not belong to any other class: “The sewers keep filling up, they are fucking overflowing and the refuse is choking up the atmosphere. From Singapore to Beijing, from Rio to Johannesburg.” According to Ari, this worldwide phenomenon is caused by people losing their jobs due to automation, but he is somewhat satisfied that he belongs to this class: “There’s no jobs, no work, no factories, no wage packet, no halfacre block. There is no more land. I am sliding towards the sewer, I’m not even struggling against the flow. I can smell the pungent aroma of shit, but I’m still breathing.”
