VOL. 7, NO. 1

Aug. 29, 1997  12:30pm

Hey S,

How you going?  Yup, a letter from your long lost bro.  How you doin’?  Eh? What’ve ya been up to? How’s your car? Ha ha haa! Mum told me about it.  Have you told Dad about it yet? (Oh God he’s always wanted to drive one of them) Do you want me to tell him. If so, I can relay to you the expression on his face at the moment of realization.  So I should fill you in on the tedious minutiae of my recent doings.

Firstly I’ve recently shed a stack of weight and am now at possibly my thinnest ever.  I even have an embryonic six-pack belly.  When I say “embryonic”, I mean that it’s half formed, not that I have some placental goo hiding under my shirt.  I’ve been doing sit-ups like you wouldn’t believe.  About 400 a day.  Can you believe it?  And I’ve been walking to and from work (two hours a day) and riding my bike as well.  Pretty soon I’ll have women swooning at my door.  I should say that I remain absolutely convinced one hundred per cent that being thin will solve all my problems. I reckon I might even get a new job out of it. (Ha!)

The Book (“Who The Fuck Cares”) is coming to the end of its production period.  Hopefully, if all goes according to plan (and it so rarely does) I should be finished within seven weeks or so.  God I hope I get rid of it soon, I’m sick to death of it and I need a holiday so desperately.  All my energies are focused on being thin at the moment and I really can’t get revved up about doing 12 hours of overtime so that I might get paid for 8 of them.  Can you blame me?

I also have a boarder at the moment.  His name is Larry.  He works in the next office and is going to the UK in three weeks and his lease ran out so he’s staying at my place.  Mum asked me “Is he neat?” and I said “Yeah, sure he’s neat” and she said “How neat?” and I said “Very neat. He’s gay.”  Mum paused in my dimly lit kitchen and looked into her coffee mug as she set it back on the table and said “You don’t have anything to tell me, do you J?”  and I laughed and said “No”, and she said “Are you sure?” and I said “No, but it sure was fun getting you to ask.”  What a hoot.  Mum was dropping over a couple of things for me to beautify the house.  It’s essential that everyone at work believes I live in a state of unparalleled luxury.  I even went out and bought a French bathrobe.  Can’t have him seeing me pad around the house in my scabby old pyjamas.  All in all though, I think I’m coping with sharing the house pretty well.  No paranoia about Larry being alone in my house and going through my things.  You might think that this is a renewal of faith in humanity on my part, but it’s really just that I spent so much time hiding everything before he moved in. I was a cub scout, mate.  Be Prepared.  Dib dib dib.  dob dob dob.  All hail Satan.

No news on the shaggin’ front.  I thought I had a nibble a couple of months ago with a friend of a friend, but it never went anywhere.  I’m watching TV again too.  Mum dropped one over.  I could hardly entertain a boarder with no TV now could I?  It’s going as soon as he flied out though.  TV makes me so lazy.  Well, to be more accurate, I have no self-control and can’t stop myself from plonking down in front of it as soon as I get in the door and staying there ’til three in the morning.  To tell the truth I’m finding it difficult to maintain my loony diet/exercise regime with Larry in the house.  It’s so much easier to just watch TV and stuff my face with BBQ Shapes, slagging off the newsreaders.

The football finals are nearing, and the office footy tipping leaders are considering their choices with much gravitas, secrecy.  There’s money involved.  And people don’t lose well.  I remember one individual last year who accused the administrators of cheating, simply because they happened to win.  and the individual happened to lose.  it’s the last round this week, finals start next week.  Can’t wait for the whole damn thing to be over.

OK, so here’s the bit where I set the rules. From now on our letter writing relationship has to have a greater degree of reciprocity.  Quid pro quo.  Letter for letter, you dig? I’ll write one letter, and then you write one.  I know you think your life is dull, but all I’m asking for is two pages.  It doesn’t have to be funny, it doesn’t have to be deep, it just has to be from you.  Tell me about your co-workers, one by one, a player profile.  I like that sort of thing.  Give me the gossip.

Dick [our Father – J often called him by his name] is still on his big  walkabout “up North”. He calls every fortnight on his mobile.  I’ve called him a couple of times, but I’m never sure how often you’re supposed to do that sort of thing.  I can be so absent minded.

Now that I’ve lost all my fat, I’m thinking of transposing that zeal to a savings plan, but I’ve really lost the habit of thrift.  It’s so difficult when there are so many things that somehow slip from being luxuries to necessities.  I mean, how can I get by without a full range of Blackmores skincare products now that I know how necessary they are?  And shoes; I need a new pair of shoes.  Sure I already have seven pairs, but I need another.  You know?  Bugger bugger bugger.  But I really have to save more money.  I’ve been living just slightly beyond my means, eating into the savings just a little each week.  At least I don’t drink it all now.  I cut back on my drinking when I went on that diet.  I haven’t been drunk for a month!  How about that?

I was thinking, if I can get along OK sharing house with Larry, then maybe I’ll get a full-time boarder in when he leaves.  A nurse would be good, they work nights a lot, don’t they?  that way they’d be out of my hair.  And since I live so close to the Royal Children’s, the royal Women’s and the Eye and ear Hospitals, it should be a cinch to get someone in.  Whaddya think?

Watched “Trash” last night, an Andy Warhol film.  Oh Lordy what a crappy film.  Full-frontal nudity with no good reason from the start to the finish.  A frizzy haired girl with no eyebrows takes off her top and murmurs to the half-naked junkie hero “You ever made it with a pregnant chick?” fondling her swollen belly.  And they were all so skinny.  Even the pregnant one.  There was this other woman with more frizzy hair and an overbite you could have prised bottle tops off with, whose vertebra stood out in stark relief as she snakesquirmed on the bed, making love to a beer bottle.  Oh it was a charming little number.  The main thrust (ha ha) of the film seemed to be Joe’s, the protagonist, sleepy quest for an erection.  Yup. Too strung out to perform for any of the endless variety of frizzy haired girls.  So he’s chasing dough for a hit, they’re chasing a stiffy, and in between you have gratuitous footage of Joe shooting up with some very antiquated syringe arrangement that had a rubber balloon thingy on the end of it.  Eeuuqgh!  I hate needle scenes. (In “Trainspotting” I knew it was a prosthetic arm they shot into but it still made me want to leap out of my skin.) And there was this one woman with a bogus English (I think) accent who was so over the top with it that you couldn’t understand what she was saying half the time.  Oh it was a grand film.  Actually, it’s probably one of those films that becomes more amusing the more you talk about it.  Like John Waters films.

Wore my brown Son of Sam jacket in to work today, completely forgetting about the great smears of soup splashed across the front of it until I was  halfway to work on the tram.  Super.  I really must start protecting my clothes, get myself one of those novelty aprons with fake breasts.  Or maybe one of the new Dahmer aprons with real breasts.  I never tire of the amusing Dahmer pun possibilities.

Well, I’m running out of space, Sis.  Write me a letter ya stinkbomb.

Much love,

J