Leap Year Wednesday Doesn't Come Around Every Year

It’s a leap year, it’s the 29th February. The fucken 29th of February, the rarest day in the calendar.

My buddy, Robert Gamble’s birthday is today. I remember dancing with him, I think, at Mardi Gras, on his 8th birthday, as he said. Funny.

Ah Robert. That was back in the days when we were sweet on each other. I guess, in gay speak, that really means we had sex.

I was sooo sleepy at 10am when I first looked at the clock, this morning, I sooo didn’t want to get out of bed. Then I remembered the rubbish and the fact that I hadn’t done it.

 “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” One of those wrenches when you know you don’t want to, at the same time knowing you have to.

I got up and stumbled out of bed like a robot on autopilot. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

I’m in the middle of cleaning up my house and I can’t afford, no, I don’t want to miss a rubbish day. It is amazing what you can throw out when you are dedicated. If you take advantage of your neighbour’s bins too. Ha ha.

I filled the neighbours bin full of old gay porn tapes. I wonder what the neighbour would have thought about that? I wonder what the rubbish guys thought? Who cares, I’ve got a clean cupboard. So much crap, so many chock a block cupboards. So little time. I just throw it out now. Thinking I’ll take it to the brotherhood is what makes five years pass by.

Jesus! My life! So fucken interesting!

Guadalupe walked in the gate before I’d finished with the rubbish. “Ah!” There she was, just like that, no announcement, no heads up, no warning.

Lip twitch. “Oh… Guadalupe.”

She grimaced and kept walking. 

I deposited myself out the back on the wicker chairs. Coffee. Muesli. Of course. At 11.30, Sam asked me to come and have lunch with him and to pick up the paintbrushes. So, I had a shower and left. Don’t think, just act, no other course of action gets you out the door and to the church – fuck me Jesus, fuck fuck me Jesus – on time. Sam had the paintbrushes for me from when we painted his place. I should be using a roller, but I didn’t have one and if Sam gave me those paintbrushes, I could do it today. We met cnr Bourke Street and Swanston Street, but he’d forgotten the brushes.

“What?”

“Oops.”

I love it when he forgets something it is an “oops” moment. When I do it, it is, basically, because I have this unstructured life with no plan to speak of. So, it is good to see Mr Plan is fallible sometimes.

We ate at The White Tomato, the spicy pork special. It was my suggestion. What can I say, I’m cheap. We decided it wasn’t so good today, kind of heavy on the onion and light on the meat.

“Not having that again.”

We lamented the fact that fat boy our favourite from our Korean restaurant had shut up shop/changed hands and that fat boy has vanished. Good food and a cuddly Korean who smiled when we turned up and who always made sure we had extra kim chi. It is to be missed, as we discovered in our less than favourite substitute restaurant. Boo hoo.

We walked back to Sam’s office to get the brushes. 

“You’ll have to walk me back to my building.” Cheeky smile, like it was the deal… all along. He’s good, much better than me. Maybe a plan, even if it doesn’t actually work in this instance, is still good training. Gives you a superior attitude? Just maybe?

What choice did I have? My last free day and I wanted to get the room finished. Promised myself I’d get it done. I wanted to get it done.

I walked up Bourke Street, did an extra quick pick for TattsLotto for Saturday night, I’m desperate, what can I say. Then to The Paperback, you know, just to see how much more time I could waste, just to see how the dilly dally could play out. 

I looked at the Neon Bible Christian Kennedy Toole’s second novel. I didn’t know he had one. I thought that was the tragedy, that he wrote one classic novel and then killed himself? But, apparently not.

I would have bought it, but according to my new book policy, I can’t buy any more, as I still have years in back log. None. Zilch. Zip. So, I sat and read some of it in the seat provided.

I got home and decided I had better get on and paint the wall. Go on! Go on! Get to it! Get to it! Now! Now! I’ve got to talk myself into these things, push myself to do it. I think it’s because of my lack of confidence in myself. I don’t know? But, before I do it, I can never envisage the job being finished.

The less than a quarter full tin of the paint that has been in the cupboard for many years matched perfectly. I got the paint brush. I started painting. I was quite amazed. The other thing, of course, is that it is now 120 something year old plasterwork, it doesn’t have to look perfect. It is amazing what the patina hides.

Sadly, the tin ran out before I got to finish the painting. So, I had to go to Manfax and get a new tin. He commented on the old tin. I told the story… many years later, blah, blah. I bought the new tin home and nervously applied the paint… and it matches as near to perfectly as the other tin. Lovely. It’s all finished.

Then I broke out my computer and started to write. I miss it when I am not on it. My addiction is great, it is still. I can’t stay away from it long, or at least, I don’t choose to. It stops me doing lots of things really.

I’m learning to do the other things first. Then give in and succumb to my mistress.

I emailed Beck, she’s emailed me to wish me good luck for tomorrow, for my change of life, for my return to the salt mines, for my journey to the dark side of cunts in-corporate. Yay for me!

Had lunch with Barb, Steph and Sue yesterday... Rachel Gore and Liz are both leaving today... Liz can't even leave by herself. There's another finance person started and Renee is moving to partner services. Bushpig is empire building – Beck

Have fun tomorrow, you'll find it really easy to use – Beck

Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god! I have to be up at what hour? To get there by what time? Really? – christian

Yeah, just like the rest of us Muppets!! Let me know if you get a lunch break and I'll come and have a coffee. Renee Muddles, that make 4 in Rachel's team for finance and partner services – Beck

Rachel Bushpig turned into a cyborg in the vein of that Susan b*tch. Good for them. Renee Muddles? Didn't all the b*tches at the top hate her? – christian

Yep, because she didn't have any qualifications.  Apparently the skinny, anorexic bitch Belinda has just come back from Hamilton Island... what a sight on the beach she would have made! – Beck

Oh dear God please don't tell me she wore a bathing suit in public? If small children saw that they may never recover – christian

You crack me up. Off home now, it's 5.15... on the dot, they don't get a minute more... thanks black law firm for my new attitude – Beck

I text Tim to see how everything was. I wanted to go and visit Nicholas, but I didn’t want to go in just on my own, I’d like others to be there too. What happens if I am on my own and I run out of things to say? You know, now that I write that it seems stupid. I used to live with Nicholas for god’s sake.

Tim was at Helen’s. Tim was going in at 7pm, but Nicholas is really tired, so Tim wasn’t staying long. I can go in then if I like.

I don’t mind a short visit, in fact, in some ways it is kind of preferable. You’ve been in, shown that you care and Nicholas hasn’t had to have been there on his own. Everybody is happy. Win win.

Nicholas looked better, healthier, he had colour back in his face. His lips were red again, not pale and white. The swelling in his leg had come down, a bit. But even a bit is heading in the right direction. He’s going in for more surgery at 6am tomorrow. Poor Nicholas.

I think it was really serious, you know. It was because he was such a boy about it and didn’t go to the doctor until it was too late. Infection in a fractured bone is not to be taken lightly.

Nicholas is funny. He’s always been coy about his nudity. About his, what is rumoured to be a, huge cock. He is so like a girl about it and not like a boy at all. Strapping Nicholas who is such a guy in every other sense of the word. He wanted Tim to bring him clean undies. He got really concerned, needy, turned into a child. 

“I really need my clean jocks for tomorrow. Pleeeaaseee.” He looked like he was going to cry, I was kind of surprised.

He was being operated on, of course. He is so hung up about it, really hung up, that… well, you know the family he grew up in… real hard, drunken, drugged out cases, um, I reckon, am really pretty sure that something must have happened to him. He’s always been incredibly good looking.

His mother is now a funny old damaged thing, but she was once a full on drug taking drunk, for most/all of Nicholas’s childhood. She famously punched out a teacher at a teacher parent night. It is kind of tell tale that Nicholas is so normal in nearly every other way. He learnt, I think, so definitely, what he didn’t want in his life.

I walked down through the Fitzroy Gardens. It’s lovely to be able to walk that way, through beauty, through grandeur, through loveliness. 

It was hot out, muggy, close. I sweat in the heat.

I don’t know why it is, but all the boofy boys were out jogging in east Melbourne in small shorts. 

There’s a nice piece of arse. There’s a nice piece of arse. There’s a nice piece of arse. There is a nice piece of fucking arse!

I had to go to bed early, no staying up until 3am. Boo fucken hoo! Oh really? What time is that, I forget? Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck! What time is that? My time isn’t my own any more. No more. Sad face.