Thursday 13 July 1995 9:19am

Sis,

I got smiled at on the tram this morning. Some blonde lady with dark blue eyes smiled at me as the boisterous conductor carried on trumpeting for tickets or something.  I actually didn’t hear him properly, and just looked up from my Herman Hesse novel to see this lady smiling at me.  I hesitated dumbly, then gave a thin, wan smile as I shuddered and dove back into my book.  I hate getting little surprises like that, it always unnerves me for the next few hours.

Darren one of the couriers will be in soon.  I stupidly agreed to buy two CD singles for him about three weeks ago, and still haven’t come good on my promise.  It started about a month ago when he popped his head in the office and started raving about some song, and I – naively – agreed with him.  Then he stared whinging about never getting to the record store because it wasn’t on his run, and aren’t the parking inspectors a plague on all couriers blah blah blah.  In the end, he asked me if I would mind buying him this CD next time I was in the music shop.  Stoopidly, I agreed.  Sooo, I bought him the CD in the next few days and he gave me the money for it and I was feeling like a good Samaritan…  Then he asks me to get him two more CD’s, really daggy songs, and I start thinking about where this could lead to.

Expressly, me having to buy Osmond records and bear the brunt of this humiliation.  It’s no coincidence that sexy chicks always work in music shops, it’s a sadistic plan to make you feel embarrassed about buying daggy music.  This put me off buying him more CD’s, plus the fact that it’s the middle of Winter, I don’t want to waste my lunchtime roaming the damp streets of Melbourne to augment the CD collection of someone I have no particular fondness for.  So, I engaged in stalling tactics, taking three weeks to get around to going to the shops, then I told him that they were out of those two songs, but he just won’t give up.  He keeps asking every day, he should pick up that I’m not keen on being his buying agent.  Why do people always impose themselves upon me like that?  I try to be nice, I try to put my message across in an oblique, non-confrontational way, but nooooooo.  So, yesterday I went down to Virgin Megastore (which has slipped so much since Richard Branson sold it to EMI) and would you believe it – they actually were sold out of both songs!  So today I’m gonna say “Sorry Darren, but three trips in Winter is enough. You’ll have to get ’em yourself.” I’m steeling myself for it, I hate being this direct, especially because it seems like such a trifling thing to do for someone, but I don’t do no favours for anyone else, and they don’t do none for me.  Self sufficiency that’s my credo (says the boy living in his Mama’s rental house).  God, what a sad little suburban melodrama. How is it that this trifling little battle of wills can get so under my skin?  I’m a delicate flower, no fuckin’ doubt about it mate.  What’s wrong with me Sis?

Same day, 2:15pm

I did it.  I covered my naked fear with disgust for Virgin Megastore’s stock policies and I feel better. I actually bought myself something too.  I bought an Oasis single, “Whatever”.  I was looking through my CD collection the other day and I started to worry that I was getting old and out of touch because all the CD’s were, like, recorded at least 3 years ago.  I don’t wanna be an old fart clinging to my 80’s-cusp-90’s music whining “Its all crap now, they don’t make music like they used to”. So I bought a music mag (The Face) and sampled some of the stuff they reviewed in there until I found something I liked.  And now, of course, there’s so much stuff I wanna buy that I wish I’d never started.

Are you going to censor Brady’s taste in music?  What if she gets into Death Metal?  Have you ever read any of the lyrics to that stuff? I mean it’s not like you can understand what they’re saying, but let’s just say the violence of the music is reflected in the lyrics.  Lots of necrophilia and misogyny.  Would you ever censor her reading material?  Until what age? What sort of literature would be on your blacklist? The Bible – make sure that’s out of reach, full of violence you know.  What about friends?  Are you going to ban her from playing with riff raff?  Are you going to get her to play an instrument or learn a language? Enough with the questions J, you’re probably so busy trying to figure out how to clean sixty nappies in a day that you haven’t really devoted much time to these piffling little issues.

Anyway, later Mama-S.

J

Sketch by J