Queen's Birthday Weekend

June long weekend. Winterdaze, party all night, take drugs all weekend. Queen's Birthday weekend, it always seemed to be our very own, in some sense. That’s what we all would have been doing once, partying. The biggest buzz for this weekend was some pot. I organised it myself, on the way up.

I took Sam up to the country. I, um, er, poisoned him all weekend. So often I looked over at him and he just looked in pain. It stopped me a couple of times. I don’t even want a boyfriend like this, so why am I doing it to him? I don’t want a pot smoking boyfriend, so why when I have one do I feed him pot?

It was a lazy weekend. May and Adrian were up too. Adrian has had breast cancer and she is still going through the chemotherapy. They cooked gnocchi. I cooked an orange cake with whipped crème and raspberry coulis.

I lay around all weekend, on the couch, in front of the open fire. Lovely. Sam dragged me out for one walk in the forest, something about fresh air, whatever. Mark dragged me out to cut fire wood.

You know I came home with pot. Of course. It wasn’t until after 11pm and I was hoping Shane was in bed. Well, after not getting half the dope deal – I just said give me half of what’s left and we’ll be square. Mark turned into his middle child and grabbed it all for himself – and only getting enough for one good days smoking, I suddenly became selfish and wanted to keep it all for myself.

Oh, I know, I’m a bad person. I’ll go to hell. How could I? Shane is the most generous person in the world. Yes, all perfectly valid points.

But, I did. I’m UNEMPLOYED!

The roller door slid open to reveal... oh damn! The lounge room lights on. Damn! The coast isn’t clear. So we’re hoping it’s just Shane, which it could be, he had an exam today.

Head in the door, and go straight upstairs, don’t stop, taking all the bags with you, so the pot is secure.

And the tall, miserable one is out of action, oh please yes. Good news on that front, he had a car accident. Woo-hoo. Pat me, prop me up, support me. Oh please! Spare us! I guess I should just sleep with him and get it out of the way.

And Sebastian will have been out partying, no chance he’ll be even conscious by now.

Oh good, just Shane.

Slip in the door, act nonchalant.

“Did you go to Bolago?” asks Shane.

“Yes.” Oh yes, wince, that’s right, he doesn’t like it when I do that. “I told you... seeing Adrian... remember?” I did tell him that. I mouth the Big C.

“No.”

“Yes, it was a good weekend. And you?”

Around the corner, out of ear shot, up into my room, hide the booty, like a gentle breeze.

Missy is stretched out on the clean washing I just never never leave clean washing on the bed for precisely the picture I’m now looking at. She must have taken up residence before my car was out the driveway Friday night, judging by the spinifex-wheels of fur blowing across my sheets.

She opens one eye. I gather myself. Spin around, down stairs.

Downstairs straight to the kettle. “How was your test?” The reason Shane couldn’t party this weekend, he an exam for night school.

“I didn’t go.”

Oh. Into the study turn the computer on. Back into the kitchen. “You didn’t go?”

“No, I didn’t have to, it was option...”

An option?

The kettle boils. Water in cup, milk in tea… back to the study.

I sneak upstairs and roll a joint crouched by the side of my bed like a thief in the night, to be ready the moment he heads to bed, must be soon. I slip back into the study unnoticed in the dark.

“Well dohl, I’m heading to bed?” Small talk, small talk, blah, blah, blah,  at my study door. I had to turn around, never turn around, sometimes you just got to turn around. Oh really, how lovely. Yes, yes. Ha hah!

Go to bed. Awkward silence. Don’t engage, you can out-stare him, you know that.

“Oh well, good night.”

Ahhhh, there you go. Hooray. “nite.”

Clump, clump, clump go the footsteps on the stairs.

I’m at the kettle nervously pushing the button, as I hear the toilet flush and the sink water being run. The kettle clicks like a gun in the dimmed light as I pour the water into my cup. Jiggle, jiggle, jigger, JIGGLE! goes the tea bag.

Out the back door in the crack in the dark, straight back to my sixteen year old self sneaking out the back door to go have a fag halfway through home work.

Click, click, click, sparks the lighter.

Puff, puff, puff. The night air has a lovely translucent quality to it, you see when you stand and gaze at it.

Back inside, sneaking all the way until I’m back behind the computer in my study. But, I know I have more marijuana and sixteen year old Christian makes a reappearance. Roll another, roll another.

I could see from the atrium that Shane’s bedroom light was off. And I decided that I was probably going to make less noise by reverting back to the lounge room mull station, rather than creeping around at the side of my bed up stairs.

Shane had gone to bed and turned off all the lights in the lounge, unlike him. And I see there is a fire burning, but the screen was there the whole time I was home. Shane probably was just on the moment of going to bed when I got home, see sometimes your timing isn’t so bad. I poke at the logs with the metal poker.

So, I turned the light on over the desk again and pulled the door down and rolled directly onto Mark’s great grandfather’s one hundred year old desk, in the only pool of light falling to the ground anywhere in the room.

It was just me in the lamp light. Shane had been in bed for a good half an hour by now. Sometimes he comes down, but not often. It was a considered risk.

My fingers work quickly.

Then there is a noise, a brush against a table, a flick of a tail. I glance sideways and there’s Missy sitting and staring straight at me, from the very edge of the lamp light on the rug... very big eyes.

I see, she says.

Long Walk to The Waterhole

 

It Feels Like I Am on Holidays

Off to the dentist first thing to get my teeth cleaned. I headed down to St Kilda with a book on the tram, lovely. People were heading to work, I didn't feel it. I click into non-work mode oh so easily.

My dentist is lovely. He looked kind of sexy when he walked in in his aviator sunglasses.

Then it was lunch with Sam at South Bank. It was a beautiful day with the sun shining down on us like molten honey. Gorgeous. These lovely Melbourne winter days, some of the nicest you'll experience. Blue skies, crisp sun.

Who needs to work? It's an out-dated ethic, I tell you.

Then it was a stroll around the botanical gardens, as Sam says we are both getting fat. And we are. Too happy, as they say.

I was bouncing around with far too much energy, as Sam said. Clearly, not a care in the world.

When I went to Costco, on Wednesday with my mate Jill, she said she hasn't seen me look so happy in years.

Then home to work on some photos, before Sam comes over after work and we head to the country for the long weekend. Queens Birthday, it's our weekend boys!

Lovely... see you Tuesday. 

Maybe, I Might Just Go On The Dole, I've Never Done That Before

Yesterday, I spent the day in Costco Docklands with my mate Jill. Oh my god, is that place amazing. There is just stuff every where and mountains of it.

At one stage we were standing by the apple pies in one direction, the mud cakes in another and the slabs of meat and fish in yet another and I said to Jill, could you imagine if  Ethiopians could see this? There was food just every where.

I bought new work clothes and shoes, now I'm ready at any minute to take up my temping role... when I feel the need. Read, when the bank balance dips precariously low.

Maybe, I might just go on the dole, I've never done that before.

I Had a Bitch Lunch To Go To

I had a bitch lunch to go to, so I didn't, really, care if the weather was fine or furious. My first with the ex-black law firm colleagues. The ‘We hate the black law firm club,’ plus an ever diminishing number of current employees, the nice ones, the people still with a little ‘normal’ DNA left running through their bodies, and not the super cyborg corporate plasma fusion where the blood used to be, ought to be, once was. In fact, the ratio has now tilted in favour of the ex's, with fewer current employees.

They were all amazed and perplexed about my exit. Apparently, my new colleague who I was, allegedly, unpleasant to – who I was, in fact happily, training – was in tears after I left. They all tut tutted about the anorexic, red-haired, bitches comments and spiel. They couldn't believe that what she used to describe me was, in fact, describing herself more accurately. They all agreed that the moody, anorexic, red-haired, bitch now looks thinner and sicker than she ever has before and they all guessed at what her use by date might be with the company, nobody gave have anything later than the end of the year.

They all agreed unanimously that the anorexic, red-haired, bitch has always been a moody, miserable cow. I gave little prompting, I promise. I wished her dead, I readily admit that and nobody tried to pull me up on it by saying that I didn't mean it.

They all wondered who might be next and for what reason, as they could see that the reason for my demise was scant.

And wasn't the weather furious afterwards, as if it was instant karma for my evil thoughts. Or was it the ebbing winds about to descend the powers of hell onto the evil anorexic, red-haired, bitch’s head. Oh, here's hoping. 

Bitter? Well, maybe just a little. I expect to move through it soon, but to what? Anger? Grief? Melancholy? Maybe, I could move straight through to the Camilla Parker-Bowls stage, a dignified silence. 

I'm sure all my friends have their fingers crossed. Actually, all of my friends think it is great. They think I have worked for Miseries & Co for far too long and think this is a positive move.

So, What Do You Do?

So, what do you do when you feel like you have been hard done by and you are feeling just a little bit down?

Make an apple tea cake and pour yourself a strong coffee, what else? (it always cheers me up)

Sit out in the garden in the sun and dust yourself off, figuratively, if you don't want to put your hand to cloth. (except, of course, it is raining today. Lovely)

And, of course, wish them all dead. (Well? I'm only human)

Okay, So We All Agree

The cunts sacked me. I didn't really see that coming, even if my mate Jill suggested it and said it sounded so much like what happened to her, a number of years ago.

I've had several meetings with the Department Financial Accounting Manager about my performance, none of which have made sense to me. The anorexic Department Financial Accounting Manager has sat opposite me and made certain allegations, none of which seem to have had any bearing on reality, none of which had been brought up by my new manager.

I went back to my new Accounting Manager, (the pretty, dumb, vacuous one who only got the job because of the girls club operating in our department) after the first meeting and tried to put things right with her and she said that she didn't have those issues with me. 

WTF?

What exactly was I supposed to do at that point?

I guess, I should have heard alarm bells at that, but I just put it down to the obviously very ill Department Financial Accounting Manager losing it. After all, she had just done the same to my old boss Beck.

(I guess you think I should have gone to the dreaded HR by this stage, but did I mention the Director of HR, Alexis Carrington, was in the first meeting, and joined in on the lies, telling a few doozies of her own, which just left me more speechless than I was before she opened her great big ugly gob) 

This place is screwy, I thought. I should start looking for a new job, which I had just started doing.

After the second meeting, my new snake Accounting Manager admitted to a small number of the issues, but said everything would be fine. Since then, I'd been asking my new snake manager for feedback and she had given me positive feedback.

I figured all the problems were behind me.

In the third meeting, I thought the Department Financial Accounting Manager, accompanied by another HR manager, the only decent one in the whole HR department, was going to say, Good work, nice to see everything is going well, but no, instead she said things were diabolically bad and that I was sacked. This time, nothing she said bore any resemblance to what I had been discussing with my new bitch snake Accounting manager.

Conclusion, the new bitch Accounting manager wanted me gone.

I don't think they, actually, have any grounds to sack me, but, you know, sometimes it is better just to move on. The best revenge is living well, as they say. 

All the time the near-death anorexic Department Financial Accounting Manager, was blabbing on, all I could think was, Okay, so we all agree. You have made up my mind for me. 

Well, not all I could think, my other thoughts were, you have become really, really ugly, your face has shrunk to two thirds of its original size and your hair now looks too big for your head. And you'll soon be dead. 

I Like Cooking

I cooked vegetable soup for lunch and chicken and mushroom risotto for dinner. I quite like cooking when I'm not rushing home from work at dusk.

I quite like cooking when I can meander down to the supermarket and buy the ingredients when it's not rush hour at the check out.

You know, when I don't have to do it, but chose to do it. You know what I mean?

I also stewed some apple for my muesli, that made me feel like I was turning into my mother. Mum always had a bowl of stewed apple in the fridge.

So much promised, right there. Look at that, won't you. The promise of delight. The promise of loveliness. The promise of great things. Right there, in front of you. Just a certain amount of unwrapping to do.

Photo of an old boyfriend, Andy

He always did have a good arse

Meeting Andy

Let me tell you about Andy. The first time I met him, actually, saw him, he was doing tequila shots off a bar somewhere with his best girlfriend fag hag. They were loud and full of life and I was naturally repelled and attracted both at the same time.

He had on a white bonds t-shirt which was tight on him, which left none of his fine muscles to the imagination. And he had on a pair of jeans that were baggy on him, pulled tight at the waist and bunching up right at the front making it look like he filled them out well. Of course, he did fill them out well.

Andy smiled at me and kind of winked and I was a little taken aback looking around behind me to see who it was he was, actually, smiling and winking at.

He and his girlfriend were the life of the bar that night.

I was there with a friend, Tom, he and I were out for a quiet night’s drinking.

Sometime later, Andy came over in his big, goofy way and slurred in my ear, “Hey handsome.” And I just thought, I bet you say that to all the guys. We chatted for a time, but not for really long, just enough time to find out our names and where we lived and what we did and some of the things that we liked, but then his girlfriend, Rosa, came over and demanded him back, and while I got the sense that he didn’t want to go, that he’d rather stay there with me, he went with his girlfriend. And that was that. 

Tom and I left not long after, Tom going to a sex club, and me heading home, a bit drunk. Staggering, a bit, maybe. Happy, sure. Feeling lighter than I normally would have after a handsome boy made eyes at me, and I liked it. Snatched away, sure he was, but he still did. Sigh. 

I lay in bed thinking about him. Stupid really. 

And that was that, life went on. 

Weeks, possibly months later, I was home in bed between jobs, lazing around, I wouldn’t exactly say rudderless, but I do like that expression. When we are motivated and achieving, we have a fin shove up are arses that steers and guides us in the direction we want to go, when we are not, it falls out with a plop sound and we just have bare, rosy cheeks to sit on. I was sitting on my bare, rosy cheeks. 

Late morning sometime, my house mate Shane said there was someone to see me.

“Who?” I called out.

“Andy,” said Shane.

Andy, I thought. Do I know an Andy? “Andy who?” I called out.

“Knock, knock,” said a voice at my door. My door pushed open and his smiling, nervous face appeared. “Hello.”

To say that I was stunned, was an understatement. “Hello,” I said.

“Can I come in?”

“Oh, er, um, yes, sure,” I said.

“I was in the neighbourhood,” he said.

“You were in the neighbourhood,” I repeated.

“Yes, I hope you don’t mind.”

“But how… no, I don’t mind, come in,” I said. “What you doing, er, um, how do you know? How?”

“I did a job for your neighbour…”

“Gardening?”

“Yes.”

“Gordon?”

“Yes.”

“And Gordon…”

“No.”

“No?”

“Rosa.”

“You’re demanding fag hag friend?”

“You’ll like her…”

“Will I?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Her lesbian house mate, owns a bulldog named Diego…

“A black bulldog?”

“Yes, he is black.”

“Oh yes. She goes to the dog park.”

“She knows you,” he said. “And I thought I come over and get to know you while I am working practically next door.”

“It’s a small world.”

“And getting smaller,” said Andy.

He slid onto the bed next to me.

He had these blue overalls on which he had left unbuttoned right down the front, giving a glimpse of his white T-shirt, and even the elastic of his jocks, I couldn’t stop myself taking peaks. 

His floppy blond hair, his square jaw, his three day growth. He looked great. The line of buttons unpopped one by one all the way down his front, as if to make a proposition, were distracting, as we chatted. It’s true. 

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be seducing him, having sex with him there and then on his lunch break, on what I assumed was his lunch break. 

Unwrapping his thick thighs, grabbing handfuls of his big purple nuts, sucking his fat shaft, rock hard like metal. sliding my finger into his foreskin, slipping his precum around on my fingertips, making long spurts of cum shoot out of him right there on my bed. Watch him shake his feet when he blows.

No, I wasn’t sure about any of that that day in my bed. That was all to come. 

We chatted and pretty soon he said he had to go. We made a date to see each other again before he left. 

That boy Andy. Sexy, and cute, and funny, and smart, and trouble, and hard working, and irrational, and loud, and a gorgeous free spirited sex pig all rolled into the same sexy, muscular, contradictory mass of maleness would be in my life for the next two years successfully and unsuccessfully. Mostly unsuccessfully, as it would turn out.

He liked gardens. He liked to work on cars. He liked photography. He liked dogs. He liked Andy. Not necessarily in that order.

Too Negative

Sam sometimes looks at me, shakes his head and just says, "Too negative!"

He’s sweet, my guy, inherently sweet. he laughs at genuinely comical things.

I’m cynical, inherently cynical. I laugh at black humour.

I’m not always sure I am a good influence on him.

Do you think cynical is more likely to take sweet over to the dark side, than sweet is likely to take cynical over to the light?

What do you think?

On a holiday as a kid I I remember I recognised this guy as interesting

Morning PT Peak Hour

Get out! Get out! Come on move quick. Battle in, battle out, this is endurance, make no mistake, survival of the fittest, throw dark looks at the stragglers pushing in the final seconds to get out. Too late!

Push past, push past, push past the mannequins and the cadavers standing and staring blankly straight ahead. No brain activity, I swear.

Excuse me! Excuse me! Do I have to say it louder, Louder, LOUDER? Move, or I’ll move you.

Push past, push past, you make me not care. You don’t care. I don’t care. Nobody cares. Who cares!

The dopes lean on the ticket machine. What do they think I am going to do?

Wake up! Come back! Earth to moron! Get out of the fucking way!

They look at me blankly, seemingly no understanding, nothing registering. The big silver box, what do you think it is for? I need to get to it. No, it’s not there just to lean on. Come on, wake up Australia.

Excuse me.

They begrudgingly move a centimetre and I wonder if I have to fell them simply to get a ticket.

Oh well, not a care, they don’t care. I push them away with my mass, I slide my body into them and they move.

The ticket machine works, now there is a plus... or maybe not. There are dollar signs on the display, always a good sign.

The coins feel awkward in my fingers and I don’t want to be another of the dopes who rummage through their purse endlessly and then drops their money on the floor only to scramble through everyone's feet. But, of course, that only happens if I am waiting behind them.

I massage them with my finger tips into the slot. Clack, clack sounds the coins as they slide into the mechanics.

Clack, whir. Click, whoosh. The machine comes to life.

Clack, clack, clack, click, click, click. The white card appears in the slot somewhere by my knee.

It is the only (useful) organic thing, I think, as I take it with my hand.

Step away! Step away! Hypocritia doesn’t suite you.

I take my place on the conveyor belt taking hold of the grab handle overhead.

Stop thinking. Stare ahead. Packed in like dominos, or penguins, my city is black. Power down like all the other brain dead mother fuckers. It is just boredom, I tell myself. You'd have to have a mind like a steal trap not to be bored of this process. And it is a process. We are all processed.

The wheels grind metallically under foot. A woo-whir, woo-whir harmonic. Gr, gr, gr, gr on the steal track in the road.

Someone gets up and heads to the door. A vacant seat, amongst dominos, ready to fall, left just-like-that.

I want it! I’m having it! I’m getting it! It’s mine! As the punters look with hesitant polite faces. They are too slow to respond.

I duck under arms holding straps as if to salute, single minded, not a care. I weave through with intent.

I slide into that seat, putting my brief case on my lap as if as a finishing touch.

I exhale, deflate, sink into the wafer thick polyester cushion. I click into standby and stare blankly at the sentries standing all around me keeping fort.

They stare glumly, stare blindly off into space. This is business, a serious business. A moment's stillness before the tar pits. Silent. We snatch respite stacked in tight.

The wheels grind metallically underneath me. Gr, gr, gr, gr on the steal tracks in the road. The old girl rattles, despite being one of the new models. I momentarily think about the state of quality control in tram factories. For some reason, I picture big Eastern Europe mills. Manufacturing doesn't care about you, it is the dollar they pursue, people are the bi-product, the inconvenient truth, so who knows if the brakes will fail on the next application. Try not to think, "they" don't want you to think.

The punters are jiggling like cattle in a truck to market. And they are going to market, employment fodder.

Grey is all around. Grey is the colour of the day. Their faces, their attitude, all around. Glum is the attitude, silent, serious. We all rattle into the CBD. I always think CBD is some short of acronym for poison printed on a warning label on a big plastic drum. Health Warning, contains CBD. Contagion Distillate Barbital. Handle with care. Prolonged exposure could be bad for ones health.

 

Wave Good Bye

Carbon emissions increase exponentially, I do laugh, the stupidity of the world. I mean to say, even the dumbest animal knows it is time to act when the nest becomes rancid. As they say, it's not rocket science. Maybe to fix it it very well may be the equivalent of. Let’s face the human race is headed for extinction. All that promise, all that potential, up in a cloud of greed.

Carbon emissions at record levels. Hang on, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Let’s face it, it was never a very nice bunch anyway, content to watch half of its fellow human beings starve to death, as the other half ate themselves into oblivion.

The anti-global warming brigade are winning in Australia, against a government that is trying to bring in a carbon tax, but with aggressive lobbying the opposition party seem to be winning with its “unwarranted increase in the cost of living” message. And sadly, it’s only doing this for its own political advantage, its not doing it for the good of the country. Or am I naive to think politicians are there for some civic duty.

And despite the fact that I disagree with everything the anti global warming lobby stand for, I’m against the carbon tax. I don’t care if the human race survives, in fact, considering how awful human beings are to one another, and how destructive they are, I think the world would, in fact, be better off without them.

The political model that has been used for the last decade, or so, is the “mum, dad and the kids” model, being paid financial incentives to re-elect successive governments. I say, let them pay the carbon tax, they’ve had all the advantages in the most recent times and they have all of the vested interest. The little snot-bags around their ankles. I don’t have kids and I don’t care if “the mum, dad and the kids brigade's” children, in fact, choke on polluted air, or fry in the warmed atmosphere.

And the breeders war cry of (said in that rat-faced receptionist kind of way) “We’re providing the economy with the tax payers of the future who you are too lazy and self-focussed to have who will pay your taxes in your retirement.”

Um no, the problem with the world is over population, you dopes.

I say everyone without kids unite and say fuck you all! 

Aren't I cute

Scanning Photos

I scanned my family’s slides over the weekend, much to Sam’s chagrin, even if he did get me the slide scanner. 

"But, all weekend," he said.

Of course, the editing and the cataloguing takes almost as long as the scanning.

I have an amazing collection of photos from it though.

I might find myself a new banner in recognition.

My family were an amazing bunch of photographers and, fortunately, amazing hoarders. I have amazing pictures from many generations from all over the world going back to the 1940’s. I might just do a pictorial family history.

The big problem is to get them clean enough after all the years of dust and grime.

Smashed in the Face

Oh yes, I had a dream that Belinda, the miserable anorexic financial controller bitch boss of mine, she was being repeatedly punched in the face. Up close. Relentless. Gory. Graphic.

Someone had hold of the back of her neck and was just smashing her repeatedly, so that her teeth and lips and jaw were breaking up and splattering and falling away.

Who's ever seen the film Irreversible? The scene where the gay guy gets beaten to death with the fire extinguisher, quite possible one of the most gruesome scenes I have ever witnessed on film... and, I guess, that is because me and my friend Kym had had enough by the time the bloody ten minute rape scene started and we walked out. Them crazy French.

Interesting film, it runs backwards and is apparently beautiful in the end, which is really the beginning, but I couldn't get through it to find out.

Anyway, my dream was not dissimilar to the fire extinguisher scene. I woke with a start, alarmed at it all and myself. But, I have to admit, that lying there in the dark on my own, my lips curled, be it, momentarily into a smile.

Anyway, I took that as another sign that I should leave work and find another job.