Just Thinking It All Through

Oh yes, did I tell you, things are happening. The end of an era, quite possibly the end of a friendship. I’ve got to wonder?

Well, it all really started when Mark and Luke arrived, so on the first night they were here, Shane responded to Mark and Luke’s asking him how he was, by saying he was getting married in a few weeks and moving to London to live in six weeks.

I had just left the room when he said it… I think. Not really, that sure. I heard it in passing. All he had told me thus far was that he was going at the end of the year.

Getting married? Really? In all the discussions in the lounge room on gay marriage, which are always against it, I don’t think he ever said how he felt? All my friends think that marriage as an intuition is a failure and why would we want to do it, when the most likely outcome would be divorce. Look at the stats. That was weird, I thought. Sure, he went on all those Equal Love rallies, but that was just something to fill in his life, until his co-dependency turned up.

The other weird thing is that I haven’t heard it mentioned again. I tried to engage him on the topic, but he passed it off, left the room, I’m not sure.

So, Mark and Luke were here on the 17th August

Tuli has been here for a week. Shane has never told me when any of his boyfriends have been going to stay. At best, he tells me when he is leaving for the airport to pick them up. Mark W and Matt practically lived here.

So, this is two weeks later and Tuli is here and he hasn’t said a word.

I know I got over it the last argument we had about the fire place in his room. A beautiful, 100 year old fire place, which he boarded up with ply wood and pieces of pine, with his bed pushed up against it, head height at the cast iron and tile insert, which he seemed to think was perfectly protected by the ply. Then there were lengths of pine placed across from each pillar on either side, on top of which he had piled a heap of cushions.

He ignored me completely when I said he couldn’t use the fire place as a bead head. The second time I bought it up, he exploded in rage and told me how grumpy I was.

(David might agree… but it was a completely different thing)

After that, I did just think a few times, in the recesses of my brain, how would I ask him to move out? Not really, but it did cross my mind.

So, I have heard nothing about the marriage. Nothing. Zip. Don’t you think that is strange?

But, you know, shrug. He has never really included me in his life, not really. So often, no. He often used to talk about his friends, not our friends. Even when he was going out with friends, friends of both of ours, he’d just say he was going out for dinner.

David always blabs.

He’s always said on drugs that he loves living here, he never said he loved living with me.

There was the ten years where I never saw him when he had boyfriends, Campbell and Mark.

I really have to remember that Shane only ever thinks about Shane. (Do we all?)

He used to close my bedroom door whenever I was away up at Bolago. No heat would get into my room, it was always a refrigerator when I got home. He kept doing it even when I told him the problem. “But my bedroom is freezing when I get home.”

I seem to attract the type. But, you know we have been friends for twenty years, of all the people I have lived with, Shane is the longest.

How has it turned into this? How did it turn into this? Go on, off you go. I have lived with many people in this house, they come and they go. You know, that is the sad bit, I’m not even sure any longer if Shane even likes me?

I knew last year, when he and Sebastian turned up ripped of their heads at 9.40 to my 7pm sit down birthday dinner, when they were bringing the desert. And then they were objectionable to just about everybody there, thinking they were being awfully clever. Knives were thrown, literally. They made up a gluten free trifle, from ingredients they bought at 7 11 on the way, which was just inedible. They used a stale chocolate gluten free crap muffin, which looked like, well…

Antony famously quipped, in his drunken stupor, surprise, “There is pate in the trifle.” Head tilt. “This trifle is made from pate?” Turning to me. “Is that usual, he slurred. “Pate.” Grimace. “In a trifle? There’s been some sort of mistake.” He looked down at his bowl and then looked back at me. “Surely?”

It is Shane’s birthday tonight and he hasn’t said anything. (28th August) Nothing. Admittedly I came home this afternoon and headed to my bedroom straight away. But that just means I’m in my room. He always does something for his birthday, but not a word.

His previous boyfriends have lived here practically, moved in, took over monopolised the house, for so long that it got too much for poor Tim and Tim now hates Shane’s guts. 

“I’ve never met someone so self focussed and so rude as him,” said Tim

Shane’s ex boyfriend Matt said recently, “I don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth.”

Actually, all of his exboyfriends seem to dislike him, you know, you got a wonder because of that, if going to live in London with a boy who you have never lived in the same house with, let alone the same city, is a clever move? As nice as Tulli seems?

Shane turned my spare room into an art studio without ever asking, as well as storing all of his junk there. And then later when I wanted to have friends stay he grumbled about cleaning it up.

He broke my dvd player

He broke the kitchen draw.

He broke the tiles in the kitchen and the bathroom.

He spilled shampoo into the carpet and never cleaned to up.

He never offered to fix any of these things. And I didn’t ask him to, I figure that it is wear and tear on the house.

(I’m giving myself a character reference, if the meaning seems at all unclear. Is that backwards?)

Now all of this sounds fairly petty, I know, but I do believe this is his home too and I have complained about very little over the years.

Oh, I’m just trying to work it out.

I admit I have spent a lot of time in my room lately, I’ve been trying to write. It is a bad habit I got into over winter. And, quite often, Shane wouldn’t be home from work until 8pm anyway.

He has been spending the majority of weekends in Sydney.

So, I don’t know, if it is me, but, Shane has no real reason not to invite me to his wedding. I so don’t want to go, but that’s not the point, I’d rather stick pins in my eyes, but weddings are what friends do. Smile.

Over the last six months, twelve months I have had stuff to worry about. Out of a job. Starting again. Sam. You know, sometimes it is just about me.

The truth is that I don’t think I even like... Whatever. I hope I don’t get the big heavy talk on the way out. OMG! Shane’s modis to operandi is to bottle it all up until he explodes (with the aid of alcohol). Oh… kill me now! I’m going to get the big dressing down, as a last measure. I’m not sure how I am going to get through that one with a straight face.

Oh, I know, I could never afford to be a Christian, it would be straight to hell for sure.

Of course, it does have to be mentioned here that the common denominator in the alarming drop in the number of my friends, more recently, does seem to be me, myself.

I should call David, he’d know all the details. She’s a stickler for details, that is for sure.

He’s probably fucken flower girl. Oh yes, anything that shines a little light on him, he’d be in. Mum’s the fucken word. “Oh, I love secrets. Isn’t this fresh. Can we talk about me again?”

He’s always good for after the event, the post mortem. Busts his arse to drop by and spread his evil fairy dust into the wash up.