Thursday,  20 May 1999

Dear S,

Igor and Dee came over for dinner last night. I made a casserole. I drank their beer. We watched music videos, bitched about work and co-workers. Igor’s been at Phoenix Magazines for a month now. His first edition is out soon.  He seems to be quite enjoying it.

 

Tuesday, 25 May 1999

How  was my  weekend?  Same tune, different  words.  Quiet Friday at Nash Harper’s place in Hawthorne on PlayStation, beer and pizza. Satisfying men’s business.  I was home around 3am.  Awake at 9.30 to hear Nash’s football show on some community radio station up the small end of the dial.  I caught the last half  hour, lying in bed with the doona wrapped  tightly  around  me boa constrictor  style.  Spent the rest of the day  in front of the heater making a greatest hits tape to surreptitiously listen to at work. In between the songs I recorded some of my favourite snippets from the Jerry Springer tape you gave me for Christmas. I bought another one by the way.  It’s not quite as good as the one you gave me though.   Still, with  show titles like “My Wife is sleeping with my Aunt” how can you go wrong?  I wish I was sending you tapes instead of letters,  then I could slip bits of it in.  Sadly however,  my voice stops somewhere short of stentorian so-letters it is.

Saturday night it was back to the Great Britain Hotel (a.k.a. The GB) for more drinks with love-poacher Boy-Ash  and Steve and Bonnie and Jen and Eddie.   I got a little sozzled, not terribly.   I decided I want to be a funeral director, sitting down the back  of the chapel in a canvas chair in jodhpurs  shouting  “Cut!” through  my megaphone at the ceremonial denouement.  Sunday  I stayed  in bed  reading  and snoozing until, er, 6pm. Got up finished  my megamix tape.

Monday night I joined  up with Nash again and went to the cinema for cheapie Monday  (Arthouse only). He picked me up in his car and we drove around Carlton for half an hour looking for a park  after nearly  running  out of petrol  on the incline on Punt Road between  two sets of traffic lights, in the rain.  It was a nervous ninety seconds I can tell  you.

We saw Praise at Nova Cinemas. Great cinema, Nova. Good chairs, nice choctops. Film was good. Grimy though.  Set in Brisbane, and everything was filthy, you  know?  I wanted to leap through the  projection screen with  a scrubbing brush and a bottle of bleach.  Plenty  of  sex in it, though not the sort you really want to watch much. I guess it was a love story, but it was more about apathy to my eye. It had a couple of those moments that every good  film has where you go “Oh that’s me!”

I was gonna go to the main stream cinemas tonight for Tight-Arse Tuesday but instead I’m meeting Vanessa and Lucy over the road at Klicks (shudder) and then on to “Banana Palm” maybe.  “Banana Palm” is a Malaysian restaurant in China Town.  Vanessa told me slyly that Lucy has booted out her hubby.  (He’s a un stoppable pot-smoking booze-guzzlin’ gambler.  Nice hair though.)  I’ll have to work on my faked surprise – “Oh my God!   Rrrrreally?”

I tell you what, I’m getting more and more sociable (or is it popular?) these days.  I discovered the secret is simply asking people if they wanna do something. For fuck’s sake, I say to myself, can it really be this easy?  Apparently so. I wanna do something (inexpensive) every night of the week from now on. I want people to say things  like “It’s just not a party without J here.”  I want people leaving messages on my machine in pleading tones (excepting ex-girlfriends, naturally, though the offer of a commitment-free shag every six weeks – refused, of course- never goes astray for Mr Ego).  I want girls to call me to go shopping with them (actually I already get that).  And I want variety.  I want a wide circle of friends and a wider circle of acquaintances.  I want, I want, I want. Gimme, gimme, gimme.

My latest porn star name: Buster Chastity.  New porno film titles: Sleeping with the Enema.  The Man with the Golden Shower.  I can’t help myself Sis.

 

Wednesday, 26 May 1999

We did eat at the “Banana Palm” (I had a Thai style red curry,  just the thing for a cold) followed by coffees and Drambuie at Barfly’s up the top of Bourke Street. Vanessa is brawling with Lisa over the sale of her car to Jade.  I’m getting both sides of it, but only giving Lisa my dual perspective .

Lucy is pretty  cool about her hubby  moving out.  No-one  seems to like him, but no-one seems keen to tell Lucy this.  Probably the right thing to do.  Vanessa catalogued  his faults to me walking from the city to my house through the possum-thick gardens.  Jade doesn’t like him either.  Vanessa hung around for half an hour or so at my place, chatting with Jen and then bounced off for the train station. I hauled my miserable  frame up to the 24 hour chemist on Bridge for cold and flu tablets.  Nearly $20! For eight days’ worth!  I got those Day/Night ones that are supposed to not keep you awake at night but I had  a dreadful night’s sleep,  tossing and turning and having  strange, half-remembered  dreams about Dawson  from “Dawson’s Creek” (crappy teen melodrama)  with bigger-than-ever hair and me hole-punching  through $5 notes and throwing the little plastic confetti bits in the air and then running through them like a money-shower.   At  least that bit was nice.

Jade’s going for three job interviews today.  One just over the road, one in South Melbourne  and one down near Spencer Street.  I caught the train in with her this morning, giving her encouraging comments all the way. “This job was made for you.” “You’re gonna kick ass in there.” “There’s no way they’ll have a better applicant for this job than you.”  I’m J the Jolly  Housemate,  best in the inner east.

Oh oh oh! Did I ever tell you my idea for a new brand of cigarettes?  “John Denver UltraLights – They’ll kill you in the end .”

 

Friday, 4 June 1999

Pop’s funeral.  No fun at all.  I beseech  you  S, choose cremation.   Burials are no good, it’s too draining, you have to go through everything twice.  And  being a pallbearer is not fun.  No, no, no.  It was all a bit, er, real for me.  Freezing too.  I don’t know what to say about it really.  Nana seemed OK, a little stunned maybe.   Dad spoke quite well in the church, lots of people  from ‘Poo Town’ showed up, which was nice.  Uncle Nev and Aunty Alice, Pete S (he hasn’t aged a day you know), Uncle Leo and Aunty Marge and Stew (he told me a couple of racist jokes in the tea room between the church and graveside ceremonies!), some of Dad’s Lions/Apex friends, Curl, and all the rellies. Great Uncle Dick  was there,  the same as ever.   (Someone  said to him laughingly  “You need  professional  help, Dick!”  He drawls in reply: “Last time I  got professional  help was in a knocking  shop.”)  Aunty J was actually, I think you could call it reserved .  The Funeral  Director’s name was Buffy  Bags.  And I’m not joking.   He’s a friend of Dad’s, (aren’t they all).

I tried to call you the night before  last but didn’t get through.   I left a message though.  Last night I went to see Star  Wars: The Phantom Menace  and didn’t get a chance to call.  It was fucking ace.  Have you  seen  it?  I’m gonna go again and again and again.

Write to me Sis. You haven’t written to me for ages.

J