Jill is a Nutjob

I woke just after 9am and thought of Jill straight away. It was hot, my white t-shirt was damp on my skin. I text, as I was still too asleep, the first one was hard woke, as I stumbled back sitting on my bed, my glasses fell off halfway through and tumbled to the ground. I nearly tumbled after them, as I bent down to pick them up. The blood rushed in my head.

“I don’t want to go today, can we go tomorrow?”

I staggered downstairs and prepared coffee. I leant on my elbows on the kitchen bench.

“I can’t go today, I am too bored, yellow, Mexican.” I text, she could pick whatever response she wanted.

“I’m having a panic attack just thinking about it.”


I finished the pot. I moved onto cigarettes with ease.

I felt heavy, and kind of listless, it was hard waking up completely. I may have been just a tad bit bonged over, as they say. The good ship lollipop switched onto autopilot to brew coffee.

I was thinking about my first joint, as the coffee brewed. As I staggered noticeably in the kitchen.

Jill didn’t respond until well into my third joint and she’s not happy. She rearranged her day and she is very excited. She’s coming over. I have until 11am to respond, otherwise she will be over. I put the hound out, it is not that hard with the enticement of food, so he wouldn’t leap about at the front door, killing that “stony silence” response, just in case she is mad enough, read stubborn, to, actually, come over.

Well, I am happy that I can provide you with so much happiness, but I don’t feel like coming out today.

I’m sure you will be just as excited tomorrow.

I felt sick and went back to bed. The day wasn’t agreeing with me. I meant to take my mobile phone with me, but some how I managed to leave it on the kitchen bench.

A was a wee bit stoned and therefore perfectly relaxed and with my already insatiable appetite for sleep, I was like a bear settling down for hibernation. In 34 degree heat. But, just be still in the silence of the day, just a sheet covering me.

The next thing, the doorbell sounded. Jill was on the doorstep. The doorbell sounded again. I pulled the doona over me right up to my left ear as I pushed my right ear into the pillow, then I could no longer hear the bell.

I could hear her on my veranda talking on the phone. (Apparently, Sam, who, like a traitor, instructed her to just keep ringing the bell) Then the bell rang again like someone had put their finger on the bell and just left it there. I could hear her still talking on the phone to someone while the bell was ringing, like she wasn’t thinking about the bell at all. I hoped the bell would break.

She called out. “Come on Christian, I know you are in there! Get out of bed!”

I had a good mind to sneak down and take a battery out of the doorbell, but I decided to stay in bed and do what it was that I was pretending to do. No movement, at the station. Stone cold silence. You know, if you want to be a successful liar you should stick as close to the truth as possible. So I lay in bed for forty minutes, while she strutted, walked, talked on the phone and rang the doorbell intermittently.

I couldn’t help but think she’d gone completely mental.

She has never been able to take no as an answer. Sociopathic ally.

I was very relaxed, with the doona over my ear I couldn’t hear anything. The day faded away, mental people too.

Some snoozy time later, I couldn’t be sure how long I’d dosed off for, I heard my front gate open and close with it’s familiar squeak. I got out of bed gingerly and stood on the north side of my balcony doors and waited. It wasn’t long before I saw the charcoal grey Jetta toddle along X Street towards Gertrude.

By this stage I was feeling quite hungry. I came downstairs and prepared muesli with peaches and I brewed another pot of coffee. Then I headed back to bed. I ate my breakfast and played on my computer. Sam messaged me that Jill was on my doorstep and I should go and let her in. So I put on my dressing gown and took on the full pretence of actually heading down my stairs and padding to the front door and opening it. “Hello?”

“Meow,” said Missy, as she strolled in.

I went back to bed and drifted off.

Sam had chastised me. “She is just being kind.” Be nice. Bad Christian.

“She’s bored.”

I slept for a while. The fan blowing on me covered in a sheet.

Then the doorbell started ringing again. This is not normal behaviour, I thought. But then I laughed and thought that we are ever increasingly being told what to think by newspapers and politicians, that we are all so ready to accept a relatively narrow band of behaviours that is classified as normal.

What is normal?

This time I put my dressing gown on and stumbled to the door. I opened it a crack, “Yes.” Exasperation.

Jill barrelled in.

She’d bought me the bathroom sink and the laundry sink. She couldn’t help herself. “I don’t care if you are sick, you are always sick. We said we were going sink shopping today, and by god we went sink shopping.” My attendance seemed to be somewhat optional. Yay. Renovation material you get when you are not getting any material. You’ve got to love that?

I told her she was mental, that she had clearly dropped a cog. She said she was hurt, mockingly. She didn't care.

The sinks are great, just what I would have picked. Good for her.

I made her walk to the post office in the blazing hot sun, I had to pay my credit card. It had to be today. Yes, I had made an immaculate recovery from my before mentioned lethargy.

“You told me it was just around the corner in Gertrude Street…”

“It is, it is just up here.”

“Next time, try saying we are walking to the post office at the other end of Gertrude Street.”

“Stop complaining.”

It was bloody hot.

Sam stayed at his place as it was 37 degrees today.

I restored photos, all night. Just focus and it is five hours later, or my hand hurts, whichever comes first.

I watched The Actor’s Studio on YouTube. Mark Ruffalo. James Franko. Liza Minelli.