Monday, 7 August 1995 10:32am

Hey Sis, new week, riding it in a good mood, it’s lasted all day so far. It’s lasted the weekend as a matter of fact.

Friday night was drinks at “Klicks”, the first under the new non-smoking rule.  The place was nearly deserted.  I didn’t mind, it’s not like I ever socialize with any of the tower-block automatons anyway, just meant quicker service at the bar really.  I chatted to one of the new girls from work and her boyfriend.  She’s nice, he’s part (I’d say about one one-thousandth) Aboriginal, and I brought up, ignorant of this, something about Aboriginals poor living standards.  Then he tells me about his aboriginality, and on and on and on it went.  I didn’t have any issue with his aboriginality, just his dullness in conveying it.  So I escaped to the “News Bar” with Cav and Nathan to drink with Cav’s Dad, his friend Ockey and some moron called Brian who couldn’t keep his hands off a barmaid who came over to chat with us.  Cav’s Dad (I’ve told you he’s a well know journalist?), invited me to his 70th birthday party. Jeff Kennett’s gonna be there, I’m not sure whether he really meant to invite me.  You know how much I despise Jeff Kennett, I’m gonna have to think it over. Yeah, I’ll think it over.

Cav and I strolled over to “Le Monde” in Bourke Street around 11pm, and started drinking Sambuccas.  Sweet, oily Sambuccas, sip by sip by sip.  Cav started hitting on chicks, I watched amusedly, amazed that in post-feminist Australia you could still touch women and not get stabbed.  I really had no idea that people were so forward.  Highlight of the evening was the near-fight we enmeshed ourselves in.  Cav started hitting on some bleach blonde blandette at the bar, her Gordon Gecko wanna-be brooding in the shadows behind.  After a bit he comes out with his slicked back yellow hair and matching tie and says “That’s my wife” in his double-breasted coffin and cheap watch.  Cav made fun of him, the tousled twit giggled and his skinny friend in his less impressive suit tried to glower.  Cav tugged the lackey’s tie and called it tacky.  It was fun, I thought we might have a brawl.  I was ready, I’ve read my Kerouac, I’ve read my Hemingway, I was ready to plumb the depths of my masculinity and take on the nature of the Brute.  I was ready to smash and pulverize, I wanted to rumble baby!  Unfortunately, they left kinda meekly when they didn’t have enough dough to keep drinking.  We laughed at their meek, under financed and over-dressed backs as they wove their way to the steel-and-glass doors, out in to the taxi-thick night.

Cav and I stayed until 3am or so, then went to Fast Eddy’s next door for some fries (nothing French about them) and cool, sobering air.  We munched our food, sitting in moulded iron seats.  We split up, and I caught a taxi home, regaling the driver as we roared through the antemeridien hours with tales of the people I have kicked out of WTFC, big game hunters included.  He was a jolly chappy.  I gave him a big tip, I’d had too much to drink.  I flung open the door to my house, marched down to the kitchen, drinking my fill of water.  I watched a little TV, then went to bed with happiness and contentment.

O hangover, thou art cruel.  Like a visitor from South Australia (Gloria), my hangover would not go away.  So I read all day alternating between a piece of trash Leah left at my house (novelisation of Alien) and my lofty (?) Nabokov’s “Lolita”.  So half the day I was reading about a monster from outer space devouring humans, the other half about a monster from France deflowering children.  Dunno which is worse really.

So the reason for this buoyancy of temperament was the advice Cav passed to me Friday night.  He told me to get out of here (WTFC), and he’s right.  I’ve realised that I am better than half the RMIT Wunderkinder that are so thick on the ground here.  I have to go back to uni.  And I’m valuable to this place.  The reason I have to do so much work is because no-one else can do it.  It sounds big-headed, and it goes against my self-deprecatory grain, but it’s true. I am better than this.  I’m going to make some pointed requests to the boss, and if things don’t go my way, I’ll leave.  I can go back to uni, I can learn to write for magazines.  I don’t have to work at a daily, I can work at right-wing Rolling Stone if I want to.  I just have to be hard on myself, and be disciplined, and temporarily surrender some of my petite bourgeois luxuries.  Looks like share accommodation for me again, Sis.  It’ll be worth it.  Even though I’m not entirely sure exactly what it is I wanna do, uni is the place to find out.  And the mental discipline will be good for a sodden old brain like mine.  Hell, Mum was saying your friend Tom has only just left uni and started working at age 29.  I can do this.

Cheerio

J

Sketch by J at bottom of letter.