Monday, 28 August 1995 9:17am

S,

Howdy.  How was your weekend?  I’m still shakin’ the dust of activity from my feet – a busy weekend.

Let’s go through it scene by scene shall we?

PISSPOT’S UNDOING

(A modern tragedy)

Author’s note: The following must be read in a tone evocative of the voice-overs in showcases of TV talent such as Unsolved Mysteries, Crime Stoppers, or that Leonard Nimoy show from the seventies that was always going to Easter Island.

Friday 25th August, 5:10pm Klicks.  The bar is full of people smoking under the sanctuary of “Klicks” (see map).  Out in Collins Place people sit sipping their drinks and sharpening their talons for erstwhile colleagues.  J decides to alternate his beer with his vodka to alleviate a looming financial crisis.  This was an error in calculation that reaped a bitter harvest of inebriation and fear.  Fear, real fear of exactly that which came to pass in those hazy hours between 5:10pm and 1:30am.

7:30ish.  At J’s entreaty, the by now diminished group uprooted itself, and migrated to another prominent Melbourne eating establishment among the “Now Generation”.  This place was called ….  “Pellegrinis”.  Once inside, the group headed towards the rear of the narrow galley style cafe/restaurant, J, Erin and Henry sitting at the bar, Mick, Kylie and Paige at the wall, facing the mirror.  J’s short-sightedness combined with is reluctance to peel his wobbly arse from his seat to go and take a closer look at the menu and possibly lose that seat precluded him from sampling the reportedly delicious house specialty – pasta. Instead, he spilled half his Vienna coffee and wiped it up with a napkin, his eyebrows knit in consternation at his clumsiness.  The coffee was his sole non-alcoholic nourishment for the evening.  Many feel that this is the key to his downfall.  Others blame the Nigerians.

8:30ish.  The, by now, further thinned ranks (they had cast Henry, Mick and Paige to their commuter fates) traversed the thirty metres of sidewalk to the pub where they secured a seat beneath a TV screening a particularly bloody boxing match.  The air was heavy with smoke and J limited himself to three drinks.  The caffeine was taking its desired effect, combing the tongue-loosening power of Vodka, beer and caffeine.  Insiders call this condition “Viennese Verbiage”.  J’s heady loquaciousness now threw his natural guardedness and secrecy to the winds, and he feels that at this juncture, he has revealed altogether too much of himself for his own good.   This notion is yet to be confirmed, and will probably remain so for Mr J’s fear of the naked truth.  We never claimed he was a brave man, nor a particularly smart one.  Rather dashing though.

1.30ish.  The trio of Erin, Kylie and J separate, Kylie catching a taxi outside the “Metro”, Erin and J electing to share a taxi, seeing as they live on the same side of town.  Making their way through Melbourne’s oddly deserted streets, the two hailed a cab at the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth Streets and J was trapped in the font seat with the driver, a fate of whose terrible consequences he had no inkling.  The taxi driver had recently discovered his true ethnic roots in Hungary, and he wanted desperately to share the glory of all things Hungarian with his hapless and incapacitated prey.  J, being in the front of the Silver Top taxi was subjected almost solely to the dangerously boring tales of how everything that’s any good at all has its origin in Hungary (including Aussie Joe Bugner the boxer).  If any of our viewers remember seeing this Silver Top Taxi on the evening of August the 25th, please contact your local law enforcement agency.  The driver of this vehicle is wanted for wantonly and viciously boring the fuck out of the occupants of his cab.

1:40ish.  After splitting the fare with Erin and abandoning her to the baseball-cap-wearing driver’s prosaic soliloquy on Hungarian supremacy in all things from sausage manufacturing to folk theater, J crossed the road, Red Rooster lying dormant at his back and drank his customary deep draughts of water in the kitchen and then reclined on his couch.  Not being able to sleep, he tuned to ABC TV’s “Rage” music programme and read some more of his Lytton Strachey book until 4am.  He awoke in bed with a pentagonal series of spider bites on his chest.

Here, the tale draws to an end.

Author’s Note: J is now living in protective custody, shielded from the devastating run-on effects of that fatal August evening which as in time came to be dubbed… “Pisspot’s Undoing”.