Tuesday, 22 August 1995  2:55pm

Afternoon S,

Just been over the road for a coffee and a read.  I loped up the stairs to lodge myself in my favorite Collins Place reading nook, and – lo and behold! – there’s a couple coupling. Right where I normally sit and pore through my snide little novels. Dizgusting! I had to turn away and hover around the escalators for a few seconds to gather my wits and indignation before marching down the other side to take them by surprise.  But when I breached the corner, expecting to see a flurry of readjusting stockings and wiping off of lipstick, I see an empty bench.  This has led me to two possible explanations: (1) The lurid, sex-crazed monsters were so startled by my initial entry into their cul-de-sac of grubby passion that they took disheveled flight as I circled round the other side or (2) I am having hallucinations of an amorous nature.  I prefer option one.

My weekend slithered by with barely a ripple really.  Well, actually, I guess that’s not true, there was some activity out of the usual.  Friday night I drank beer because I wanted to save money.  I left “Klicks” early because I was meeting Brett at my house.  I got home, Brett arrived, I drank some more beer that was left over by someone sometime.  Brett suggested we go to “Club Fuck”, this new bondage club in some old Police Headquarters near Carlton.  I saw it in the news because it’s right next to some Church who are a bit upset about “Club Fuck” opening right next door.  These churchy types are so precious aren’t they?  So then Leah and Aidan stopped in on their way to “Dream”, and Brett and I agreed to go to “Dream” first for old times’ sake and then snake our way to “Club Fuck”.  Alas, we never made it out of scabby old “Dream”.  I drank more beer there, and got roped into conversations with old hags whom I ceased attending these clubs to avoid, and so on. The hag in question badgered me for my phone number, and I didn’t want her to have it, or offend her by refusing, so I thought of your old trick, but I didn’t know the police station number by heart, so I just switched around some of the numbers in my real phone number.  It was a bit shabby, maybe she was just being friendly, but I don’t really care.  Leah and Aidan introduced me to some Goth thinking we’d hit it off.  She shot me one appraising look down the bar, said “Oh… Hi.”  and then dashed off in a rustling of velvet (evil Goth Girl). I assumed a Buddha-like countenance of benign apathy while I withered inside and drank more beer.

Brett and I left soon after a cursory glance around the club for Leah and Aidan (we didn’t really want to find them) and then we motored back to my house, ate packets of chips and whined about how glad we were to get out of there.  Brett left sometime after my beer-overdose dementia kicked in and there’s an ensuing period of time for which I cannot account, though I know I got half undressed in the kitchen.

I woke early and felt surprisingly dreadful, I didn’t think I’d had that much, eleven drinks to my reckoning, but they were beer drinks.  I could have polished off eleven vodkas and felt dandy, but eleven beers sent me spiraling down into a bile-bucket hell from which there was no clawing out of until six in the the evening.  So this week I’m not even going to “Klicks” I’m gonna save my money to pay off my phone bill and buy a book to read for the weekend.

One fortuitous by-product of my over-indulgence is the cleaning urge I get the day after.  Do you know what I was doing at 7am Sunday morning?  I was on my hands and knees in the kitchen with yet another bucket and a scourer rubbing all the scuff marks off the kitchen lino.  Not even Mrs Cleaver would be that nuts, and she wore pearls to do the vacuuming.

J

Drawings by J.