Tuesday, May 05, 2015

My Friend Jill

One of my oldest friends, Jill, from that circle of friends you have as a teenager, who are still, pretty much, friends to this day, has got so fat I'm afraid the next stage for her is shut-in. Jill and I like to joke about it, we both have a sweet tooth, we both like to eat.

I wrote this a few days ago, after Jill called out of the blue and wanted to know if Sam and I wanted to go to the movies.

We met Jill at The Jam Factory at 5.45 to eat Mexican and then watch the Avengers Movie. I haven’t seen her for ages, she’s not been calling, when we used to call all the time. Something has changed, I'm not sure what. She's been looking after her elderly father up until recently, I just thought she was having time to herself.

I've been stoned since the weekend, since my Mark visited. Mark the gardener.  He commented on my garden, that is the first time that has ever happened. And while it is true I have planted a few new plants to fill in the obvious holes, all I have really done is water it. It is amazing how much difference water makes.

"What have you done, it looks great?"

"I gave it some water."

"Ah, one of the closely kept secrets about gardening." He smiled. "Don't tell everyone.

He even took photos.
This has nothing to do with what I am writing here, but it was the very first time Mark had complimented me on my garden.

So, I was a little groggy, so to speak, hitting the fresh air. Nice and relaxed, one might say. We caught a tram in Victoria Parade just after 4.30pm. The world seemed like a busy place once we were out and about in it. I like the change that catching a tram brings to driving some where.

We ate burritos and a choc top, mine was salted caramel. Actually, Jill turned down the choc top saying that she had already had soo much sugar this week. That's a first. 


During the dinner, Jill asked me why she does these things? (eat food) “I’m going to go blind, or lose a limb, why do I do it?” I didn’t know what to say, she caught me off guard. We usually joke about such things, I wasn't really prepared for the change of focus, and I stumbled and I didn't steer the conversation back to the topic. She has got worse ever since she inherited all the money after her father died. I guess it didn’t make her happy.

We talked about Mark Iceman, her brother inlaw, he is now terminally sick from cancer. He has a rare form of Lymphoma. He’s been going to the doctors for the last, maybe, 5 years, because he felt there was something wrong, so by the time he was correctly diagnosed, he was in stage four and untreatable. He is a well respected psychiatrist, so he has some medical training. At one point they thought he had motor neuron disease, but there have been other diagnosis’ too.

Jill told me she was going to Leah’s fiftieth birthday. 
(my girlfriend from back when we were all young, who I have fallen out with recently, and who has made no attempt to call and reconcile. She just cut me out of her life, as I have done her) Then she told me some cute little anecdote about some mix up with the party that you would tell a close friend who was probably going to the party too, without any realisation about what she’d just done.

I bristled and um'd and ah'd.

Jill hesitated, as if she wasn’t getting the correct response from me.


I'd been contemplating writing Leah a birthday card, as a way of a  truce. I'd thought about it several times, thinking it would be the nice thing to do, you know, but I hadn't done it. We haven't spoke in four years, so I am guessing both of us are happy with the current arrangement  But a party? Of course there would be a party.

I fell asleep, I think, through the first half, at least, of the movie. The new Avengers Movie. Modern action movies are often confusing even if you are awake through the whole thing, so... I don't know when I woke up. There was a lot of explosions and action. I kept wondering if Captain America and Thor were going to get on with each other. I could see Chris Helmsworth pulling down Chris Evan’s tights. Chris Evans would have a nice, white arse. All I really remember was looking around the cinema, trying to focus, with what seemed like the end of the movie coming, interminably, impatiently waiting for the credits to come up. And then they did. I felt stunned, more can’t think than violent smack, as it was all over and we could get up and stretch our, my, legs. The Hulk looked like Mark Ruffalo.

I love the Jam Factory building, that main auditorium is fantastic, but the rest of it has always been a little tacky. The toilets boggled my head, coming and leaving, with its warren of grey painted hallways. When I came out before and after the film, I was in a bunker, seemingly in military colours, the correct direction in which to exit, I had no idea. Both times, the actual exit corridor seemed like an after thought, a minor side alley. No wonder I had trouble finding it.

Jill made us walk her to her car, a pet peeve of mine... I'm still miffed clearly about her saying no, bluntly, “Ah… no!” to driving us home the first time we went to the movies. No way, was the implication. Rude, I thought. Then she expects us to do the gentlemanly thing and walk her to her car. I mean, 8pm in a busy Prahran car park? What does she think is going to happen to her? Seriously? And just as I suspected, her car was parked in the premium car park, closest to the doors, Miss Jill isn’t going to walk too far. She’s just a princess, (or has sky high sugar levels) who expects it all to about her. Nothing has changed. Funny how you love and hate people often for the same qualities. I think it has something to do with me being stoned. (I was tonguing for a joint as we came out of the cinema)

I was texting David as we walked to the car park. Sam says that I then just flicked Jill off once she was in her car.

“Can I drop you somewhere?” (She meant at the front of the Jam factory)

“No thanks.”

Well, what else has she got to do if she doesn’t drive Sam and I home, resume eating on the couch? I mean, really. Sad but true, that is the subtle change in her personality that I am detecting, her food addiction is way out of control.

What Sam doesn’t take into account, Jill and I have known each other for bloody years, since we were kids together, we can say good bye anyway we like, by this stage. It won’t matter, we’re like old shoes, never to part. I must take her aside and resume the conversation seriously about what she is doing to herself? Oh Jill, if this is still about Steve who broke her heart twenty years ago, I’ll slap her. She needs to get serious about it now.

I don’t care if she doesn’t drive us home, even if it sounds like the opposite. I love zipping through Melbourne by tram. It is my preferred mode of transport, out there with the real people, sucking lungs of fresh air.

We got home at 9pm, on the tram. There was some mad woman, with, what was probably, her worldly possessions covering the floor of her pod. She was prostrate on the floor, excavating under one of the tram seats. She had a completely possessed look on her face. I gazed down and pitied her, as the underneath of the seat cracked and broke under her mad efforts. She had long hair, which covered her face every time she came up for air, and as she tried to brush the hair away behind her ears, she gave a damn good impersonation of Munch’s Scream.

Poor thing. “This is the result of government funding cuts,” I say to Sam. “All the loons have been let out. Once upon a time, she’d have been locked up somewhere.”

Sam nudged me and said, “She can hear you, why do you think she keeps looking up?"

Oops. It was true. She dug under that seat as though she was the last person left on earth and she was burrowing to a better place.

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