Shane’s Fortieth

Sam and I ate Yum Cha at Doncaster Shopping Town, before we went to the Apple shop to have his faulty new phone looked at.

Sam went to Apple and I stayed at the bookshop until I got bored and then I went and bought a vanilla thick shake. Sam couldn’t believe it, “Fat and sugar,” he said. “I don’t believe you.”

He is very pleased though, they replaced his phone again, second time in two months.

“The premium service club, exclusive membership,” he says.

Shane’s fortieth birthday at XYZ in Smith Street. Everyone was invited except Mark and Luke. I found this out when I got home around 5pm, maybe later, from spending the day out with Sam.

Jane told me. She was staying the night and was getting ready by that stage.

It just made me feel like I didn’t want to go. What was Shane doing? What for? Mark has been his friend for twenty years and Luke for no so less than that. How did he think that would make them feel?

It’s the “now back to me” syndrome. Shane can suffer from it, sure. They can’t ever get far enough passed how it makes them feel to consider how their actions make anyone else feel. The nothing beyond myself syndrome.

Shane was already secreted away in his room with Sebastian... being fabulous... being mysterious. They were doing “outfits.” When they came out they had eyes like tea cup sauces and they rushed out the door, saying they had better get there. I am the “star” after all. At 7pm, despite the invitation saying 7.30 for an 8pm start. Despite the fact that Anthony hadn’t arrived by 7pm as he said he would.

Whoosh, they were gone. 

It made me feel like I was going to a sixteenth birthday party, who’s invited, who’s not, who’s in, who’s out, rather than a fortieth.

I wondered if I should go at all, as Sam and I stood in our street and waited for Anthony’s taxi. He arrived a few minutes later.

Sebastian, Shane and Jane were the only ones there when we got there. With Martini’s, of course. That’s what you do. That’s how you should be seen.

Eventually, it also includes, Mark W and Barnie, Matt (minus boyfriend) and Campbell (minus boyfriend), rounding out the three ex-husbands of Shane’s. All three were sitting side by side at one stage when Shane yelled out, “Alert! Alert! Alert! What’s going on down there? The ex-husbands together, I don’t like the look of that.”

D, Julien and Bobbi, Thomo, and Carlo, the men’s boutique guy who Craig met amid cock sucking in the change rooms. Of course, he made the birthday shirt, which I so didn’t get. It was a navy blue shirt?

Dinner was okay. The dishes were as if they had been prepared for midgets, everything was in miniature. You know the look, large white plates as large as a sun hat and two miniscule morsels plated with a scrape of deconstructed hollandaise and a grain of rice. There were seven courses, all the same. Thimbles. It was like I inhaled 7 shots for the evening. It was crap, really. Come on, just too clever for its own self.

Oh, isn’t this divine one wide-eyed queen said after another. Almost questioning, fishing for support. We were all too polite... or too pretentious.

It cost some astronomical amount of money, way passed the estimates, I think, because the birthday boy and his wingman drank non-stop martinis all night. Then there was a second round of requests for money, for the tip, which, actually, was for the take home bottle of vodka the birthday boy and his wingman required.

A lot of people left early, a select few came back to our place. D turned up at our place, despite having left the restaurant early. 

Guido bought pot. I rolled joints. D did too. (Sam would famously dish D’s joints on Sunday)

Shane unwrapped gifts, in a big show. Out of it Sebastian shoved the boxes into the fire place, until he made quite a show of the flames licking up the front of the fire place ferociously.

“Um Sebastian? No more boxes.” As the crazy-eyed, faux flock shirted one, was attempting to shovel another box passed the Towering Inferno threatening to end all of our nights.

D hung around for a time, being his current caustic self, until he blurted in my ear, “Where are the drugs? I’m only here for the drugs. He was supposed to have organised them.” Pointing at a completely spaced out Sebastian. “I’m going home, in that case.” And D left.

My next door neighbour – concerned, lefty, lesbian, and one of the 21st Century fearful – stopped me out the back and told me how worried she was about the flames shooting out of the chimney... as I stood quavering between one step and the next, as she lurked through the opening in the fence.

“There were large embers flying about. And our gutters are all block up.”

My immediate thought was, Well, unblock you gutters, you lazy bitch. Instead, I said, “Oh I’m sorry. We were just unwrapping birthday presents and one of the drunk guys put a box on the open fire.”

“Well, as long as they know not to do it again.”

Oh, bugger off. “Oh, they know not to do it again.”

Shane even talked about Jane’s birthday/the final evening at Bolago and what he and Sebastian were going to do. I was gobsmacked at the lack of sensitivity. Momentarily, it felt like a new all time low.

When I was sitting on the floor with my head against the arm of the chair and I slipped away into the land of nod, I decided I’d had enough and I took Sam’s hand and left Shane, Sebastian and Anthony to it.

The “back to me’ers” handed Anthony joints all night, unable to think passed their own well being/selves.

I wondered if Shane found it all a bit sad and lonely when the thing he most craves is a boyfriend. I wondered if doing drugs etc is not so much fun on your own. I find it a couple thing to do.