Friday, 3 Feb 1995

Sis,

Well, I didn’t end up going to that party at Christopher’s on Saturday night. What does he expect anyway, inviting me to a party where the only people I know are the host, who’ll be running around all night and someone else I haven’t see in four years. Christopher will be mightily pissed off though. I’m trying really hard to think of a good excuse, but it really has to be a super one – I’ve stood him up twice now.

Tell me something Sis, do you think I’m cold-blooded? I only ask because some people in the office have given me cause to consider it. I asked this guy, Cav, if he knew whether or not you could check if someone had a criminal record because I was thinking about getting someone else to move in, and I wanted to make sure they weren’t murderers or child-molesters or thieves or something. He called me paranoid. I think it’s just being thorough. And then I said that I’d like to have a lesbian move in because then there’s no chance of any sexual tension between me and them – and let’s face it women do make better house mates than men. Then Cav and Quinn accused me of being afraid of intimacy. Fuck! And then when I said that I’d prefer them to be working night-shift so we didn’t get in each other’s way, they were horrified. They  said that I should get someone in with whom I could be friends and spend time. Christ, I’ve lived with friends before and familiarity really does breed contempt. I wanna keep that respectful distance between myself and any prospective housemates. Choosing a housemate is a business venture, one needs a level head, I think the people in the office are confusing practicality with coldness.  Anyway, it’s a redundant argument because I’ve realised I could never live with anyone else again, I’m too used to my own ways now. I’m too used to the quiet, and being able to do as I please, when I please.

Dad rang yesterday. He always tells me about restaurants on the phone. You know, places he’s eaten. Like I’m interested in that! I think he wants me to go to dinner with him and his slut. I could hear “her” in the background on the phone, flicking through the Good Food Guide yesterday, giving him the address of some restaurant which he in turn gave to me. I tell him over and over that I hate eating in restaurants, but it makes no difference. I especially hate eating in nice places. Places where the waiters have a better education than I do. Places where the table cloths are cleaner than the clothes I’m wearing. I live dives. I like the greasy spoon genre, I feel at home there. Eating in restaurants generally reminds me of all those god-awful dinners we were dragged along to as kids at those depressingly middle class restaurants like “The Golden Chopsticks”. I hated eating there, always at the kids’ table, with a bunch of Mum and Dad’s friends’ brats whom I couldn’t stand, with some dickhead making the same old jokes about the Lazy Susan in the middle of the table – “Let’s give ‘er a spin! Haw, haw haw.” I’m so glad I don’t have to do that sort of shit anymore, the yoke of adult responsibility and independence does have its upside. Oh yeah, and Dad always says “They have some vegetarian dishes there too, Digger.” He pronounces the word vegetarian really carefully, kind of like it’s a disease name with which he’s not entirely familiar.

Anyway, I’d better go, I’ve just been paid and have to go to the bank blah blah blah.

J