Thursday, 20 June 1996

Hey Sis,

Have to start this one in a temporary file.  My computer’s being all jazzed up and had Windows 95 installed, but it doesn’t have Word on it yet.  So, what have I done? Lemme see…

Friday night was the obligatory drinks (which I’m skipping this week by the way for a bit of variety) which stretched into the wee hours with just Scottish Lisa, Paige and I in “Spleen”, up ’round our usual haunt – the top of Bourke Street.  I drank mainly light beers ‘coz of this diet I’m on (still going great guns, great guns).  Got home around 2am.

Saturday was spent in bed with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera”, a nice book about geriatric love.  I give it a hearty recommendation.  Saturday night saw me venturing out to Oakleigh for a work party, courtesy of Tatiana.  It was good, her house is lovely.  It made me nostalgic for childhood’s backyards.  She and her man, Rocky, (who’s really nice as it turns out, I quite liked him) have this two bedroom place with a big backyard and a sort of utility room out the back (I suppose you’d call it a bungalow) filled with books (mainly Sci-Fi).  Opposite that there was a cat enclosure with two groovy looking cats inside.  Nice and fluffy.  Got home from that one around 2am as well.  Kinda blew the diet that night, went halves in a bottle of Vodka with Lisa. I think I polished most of it off.  I should shout her a few drinks I guess.

Sunday I spent in bed (again) nursing another hang-over.  Finished off “Love in the Time of Cholera” and started Dostoyevsky’s “House of the Dead” which I’m over half way through now.  It’s a lot lighter, paradoxically than most of his other work.  I say paradoxically because it’s about prison, which hardly makes for lighthearted reading, but the prose isn’t so convoluted as most of the other stuff of his I’ve read.

same day, 3:14pm

Pulled my donut scam today.  Netted two dollars which I promptly had to hand over for an office birthday present. Two dollars saved, I guess.  I didn’t have any donuts myself, I just buy ’em in bulk and sell ’em off at a profit. $4 for a dozen, sold at 50c a piece.  It’s more for the novelty than anything.  You do feel like a bit of a match seller, but what the fuck.  It’s also a part of my diet kick.  You know the way anorexics obsessively collect articles on and pictures of food?  Yeah, well I sell donuts.  At least I make some money.  It’s a bit like being a non-drug-using pusher.  It’s not to support my own habit, but to watch the descent of others into lard-arse-ness.  The other aspect of this stratagem is to make me look thinner by fattening up all my peers.

Friday, 21 June 1996  9:10am

Shortest day of the year today, for us anyway.  Guess it must be your longest, huh?  Damned if I can remember the proper term for it.  It’s not equinox, is it solstice?

Went out last night with Paige and Scottish Lisa and a newish girl, Pippa and some of her friends from Uni.  They were quite nice.  One of them was a Labourite (Jodie) who really does stand by what she believes. She actually works at an electorate office and stuff.  She had loads of really good gossip.  Can drink like a storm-trooper. Had a boyfriend with a quiff, nice guy.  Had his red V-neck jumper on back-to-front most of the night.  I thought it was on purpose, so didn’t say anything for fear of appearing gauche.  When someone else told him, he hardly even cared.  Now that’s cool.

I didn’t drink (I had one vodka for the last round.  Pippa said she’d be offended if I didn’t have at  least one drink on her birthday.) and left around 11pm just as I saw Pippa, Lisa and the bequiffed one stumbling down a red stairway to poke around a porno shop.  I dared them to ask for a job.  I heard plenty of giggling as I loped to my tram stop just around the corner.  Lisa told me today that Pippa fell down the stairs and lost a shoe.  Pippa’s been in a bad way all day.  She drank and drank and drank.

And that dear Sister was my Thursday night.

J