Monday, 5 February 1996  11:08 am

So Friday I go over to “Klicks” for drinks.  I’ve worked out my budget, and I know I really ought to go after two or three beers, because I’ve got this pub crawl thing with Quinn on Saturday night.  Quinn used to work here, now he’s in advertising with a four day week and an enormous bloody salary.  Anyway, back to Friday night.  So I’m over there, and I buy a jug of VB, thinking, when this one’s finished, I’m out of here. But then another one sort of materializes on the table, and hell, I paid for the other one, I may as well have a beer out of this one, get my money’s worth if you like.  And I think you know where it goes from here.  To hell in a hand-basket! Oh Sis.

It wound up just four of us in some divey pub in Richmond.  I was so drunk I actually played pool at Nadia’s request.  I played patchily, some cracking shots, some woeful shots.  None more woeful than when I bounced the white ball off the table and into the band that were playing.  I had to walk across the dance floor, in front of the stage and pick it up, every eye in the place following my wobbly progress.  I smiled at the crowd in my black Hawaiian shirt, gave ’em a little wave and then it was back to the game. I won the first game, lost the second.  I was glad to end it, life at the top is lonely Sis.

After the divey pub in Richmond, Nadia taxied home and Sophia and I went back to Scottish Lisa’s house in St Kilda.  Lisa gave me a little tour – lovely house, grand sweeping staircase, wide, wide corridors.  Nice.  Then I remember being shown Lisa’s bedroom, and there were pairs of knickers all over the floor, so I was trying to discretely kick them under her bed to save her the embarrassment of knowing that I’d seen her knickers, but she saw me and said “What are you doing there J?”  I think she thought I was trying to take a pair home with me.  Oh God, I blush just thinking about it.

About 4am I fell asleep on the couch for ten minutes.  I woke up grouchy with Sophia and Lisa for letting me fall asleep and then I was out the door, into the St Kilda night, searching for a taxi.  Thankfully one came quickly and I was whisked back to Flemington.  It was around 4:30am.  The birds were singing as I brushed my teeth. Bastards.

I fell asleep up the wrong end of the bed. Gave me a hellish fright when I woke up and tried to get out of bed, banging into the wall like that.  I got out of bed around 2pm, felt like crap.  Did some domestic chores and sucked down coffee after coffee. I was warming up for the pub crawl.

Saturday: Simon comes over around 8pm.  I finish my bag of chips and we’re on our way.  We get to the “Napier”and Quinn and his friend Kez are half-way through these enormous hamburgers.  Simon bets them they can’t finish their meals.  He promises to shout them drinks all night as bait.  They fail. We chat for an hour or so, then Erin turns up. We get another chair and crowd around the tall, narrow table.  I skip my beer when it’s my turn on the buying round, to keep myself half decent-like.

So we gossip and bitch until 11pm, when Erin and Kez head off.  Simon, Quinn and I slink about the Fitzroy Streets, hunting with slitted eyes for another drinking establishment.  We settle on “The Perseverance”.   “The Perseverance” is a biggish place, full of guys in white shirts and blue slacks, with budding paunches and all on the wrong side of thirty.  Quite boisterous too.  The toilet floor was covered in vomit, and the patrons at the urinals were unusually talkative.  Like, really talkative.  Everyone was laughing and talking to their neighbour.  This is highly unusual for a male toilet Sis.  Normally it’s go in, do your thing, get out ASAP with as little eye contact as possible.  These fellas were wading through the vomit-lake and heaving with jocularity like vomit-vikings. I quickly fled the scene I can tell you.

The three of us get a table along the wall. There’s a half empty pack of Peter Jacksons on the table which Simon nabs.  I tell him to give them to me, coz I know he likes to smoke when he’s loaded.  He keeps the cigarettes.

I’m facing the wall, the other two are facing the crowd.  They keep nudging each other and pointing out tits in the crowd.  I feel slightly left out, but glad I don’t have to slaver like that.

We leave at 3am, when the lights come on.  We look for somewhere else to drink, but the wind has fallen from our sails.  Simon and I share a taxi.

And that was that . ‘Til next time S.

J

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