Women

Several months ago I witnessed one of the most memorable arguments I have ever seen or heard throughout my life. It took place in the middle of a relatively upper-class Mediterranean restaurant where I was eating with my girlfriend on a rainy Valentine’s day. The conversation between a balding man and his Vietnamese wife sitting in the corner of the joint gradually erupted into explosive shouting and insults. The interesting thing was that they seemed perfectly fine and happy together when they walked in, but after several minutes of looking at the menus the shouting began. I could hear the voice of the woman slightly escalating with a whiny twinge, while words like “why are you always…” and “this is why we can never...” were flying around in the mix of a hushed down angry whisper. Unaware of what was about to happen, assuming the argument was never really going to take off, my attention went back to the yellow rice and fish sitting in front of me, as well as my girlfriend's voice I could hear somewhere in the background (she was a real fucking bore. Why I was spending that night with her instead of getting high and watching TV, single and happy about it, is still a real mystery to me). From what I can recall our conversation at the time went a little something like this:
“What would you do if I slept with someone else?” she says, trying indirectly to get me to say how much she meant to me.
“Well… I'd hit you over the head with a shovel and bury you somewhere in Western Australia”, I said with slight humorous attempt and general lack of interest.
“No, but what would you really do?”
“Probably just stab you to death. I don't even have my P-plates yet.”
“Am I ever going to get a straight answer from you? Ever?” She asks.
“Fuck, is that Tom Waits?” now focusing on the music coming through the stereo.
This is how most conversations between her and I were conducted. Stupid questions, lack of interest, stupid questions, etc. etc.
 
So the argument that happened that night in the restaurant was an absolute life saver, if it was ever possible to die of severe boredom. At this time I was especially not paying attention to what my girlfriend was saying, and she wasn't dumb enough for this to go unnoticed. However, my excuse was that I was a little hazy from the sleeping pills I took the night before that give me strange nightmares, and this is what I told her. It was all entirely true and I had a free pass for inattentiveness for the rest of the night. What I didn't tell her though, was that I was taking the pills for inspiration; I was writing a short story horror collection that had a chance of being published by a friend of a friend, and the deadline was just around the corner. First time I swallowed these pills I took twice as much as I should have, didn't get to sleep until 4am, then woke up at 2.30 in the afternoon screaming like a goddamn banshee. It was a strange drug, or perhaps just a strange reaction on my part. At least they were good for something, but really, my waking life in the past week had been like a preview of the afterlife. Barely felt like I existed at all. Funny thing is, I was still tired as hell. Got my prescription changed a few weeks later.
 
I was stabbing at my fish with a fork continuing to think about my state of mind when the balding man stood up and started yelling in the corner of the restaurant. “Hey! I got an idea!” he screams. The whole restaurant jumps up and turns around at this. “Why don't you wipe your cunt with a fucking tissue and come back when you feel better? You and your temper you bitch, you and your fucking period, can't fucking stand it, can't stand you, you cunt!” He goes on like this for a while and storms out after being confronted by a waiter. Hilariously, the Vietnamese woman stays and orders a full course dinner banquet and a bottle of wine, with little to no change in her body language or facial expression. “What a prick!” my girlfriend says, referring to the man who left, and to this I can agree. The woman though, to me, appeared elegant and graceful. She changes something in the air and the way I feel about where I'm sitting, and what I'm doing there. After several minutes of contemplation, I stand up and grab my jacket.
“What are you doing? Where are you going?” she asks.
“What am I doing? I'm going home to die in my sleep, I'm so fucking exhausted. Have you even glanced at me today? The bags under my eyes are so deep you could go grocery shopping with them. My face is so pale I can almost communicate with the dead. I had a heart attack looking at myself in the mirror before!”
She pauses and looks back at me with a confused look.
“…No movie??”
“No movie. I've already seen The Wrestler.”
“You know what this means, right? I mean, it’s Valentine ’s Day…”
“Yeah I know what it means.” And I leave. In retrospect, that was one of the most heartfelt conversations I ever had with her.
 
Wish I had the courage to thank the Vietnamese woman that night. She gave me more inspiration than those pills ever will. It’ s good to be free and we know it like nothing else. Me and her. Fucking carnival of freedom.

Apartment Man

An event that occurred several months ago which is worth noting and revisiting.

It was early 2009 when my friend had just moved into his new house in an expensive, atmospheric part of ********, where jazz cafes blossom and noise bands perform. The area would be the definitive centre of hipster communities, where University students with fixed gear bikes come to discuss the Indie music scene to the best of their abilities (if they even knew anybody to talk about, that is). Upon passing the famous Art & Front cafe, tall, egocentric kids with slick black hair can be seen lighting up cigarettes like they had practiced in the mirror. Girls with short, dark hair and skinny frames gawk through their round, eye-shadowed eyes, cute by stupidly empty. Chai-tea is always steaming through the nozzle of a pot on a small round table, and 30 year old failed writers push their luck on laptops under heavy beards and old clothes. The interesting thing here is that in this part of town, the differences between a hipster and the homeless are so blurred that it is almost dangerous to ask for directions if you aren't carrying any spare change. Although a very friendly and expensive neighbourhood, the flats that are located several blocks down dispatch a number of ghastly junkies and low-lives every now and then who wander up the street to the shop/cafe area. Anywhere in Australia you are bound to find these people lurking around, even in the cleanest of areas, as long as the council flats remain and the IGAs sell Long Beach cigarettes for less than 15 bucks. Anyway, this stuff isn't so important.

The strange event took place in the earliest stages of the night, where the three of us (me, my friend and a dark skinned girl-friend we both wanted to fuck) had gone shopping for groceries and were lining up in the queue. It was the Asian part of ******** which was often infested with students who ransack the Chinese supermarkets for 30 packs of dumplings that went for 3, 4 dollars. The 24 hour fastfood joint was also an attractive facet, and every corner of the district was packed with a liquor store, Subway, KFC, yam-cha restaurant etc.; basically making the place a large dining area with a library and gas station on the side. Apart from the students, there are many empty-pocketed, track-armed fiends who smash beer bottles for fun and push their four year olds around in trolleys in the middle of the night. Kids beep at old Asian ladies to flip them off, truckies stare you down while they smoke their cigarettes, and the generally heavy atmosphere of the place will make you jump at the sound of a bird flying off. The public toilets are littered with syringes and successful heroin dealers loom over the area from their dimly lit flats only located across the street. During the day the public swimming pool is packed with kids of all ages who have the time of their lives there, myself included as a six year old, and the area always had a nostalgic quality attached to it for me. But thirteen years later, all I see is dirt and insanity staining the concrete with trails of repulsive odours. The food vans (vans that park in the middle of shopping areas or any open space, providing things like sandwiches and coffee for the underprivileged) are surrounded by flocks of hungry seagulls who throw the food up right around the corner, unable to keep it down after days of not eating. I once remember being stuck with a number of dirty but friendly junkies on that side of town, hanging around to score some mescaline (very rare in Australia). These guys had just fixed up in the aforementioned public toilets and came to the food van to eat. Less than 3 minutes later all three of them threw up, complaining about the catch 22 that their appetite only came around when they were smacking.

So I'm sitting outside of a Woolworths smoking a cigarette, waiting for the other two to emerge with their shopping bags, when I notice this fairly young, dark kid smoking a cigarette very close to me. Not taking any particular notice I continued to stare ahead and smoke, when I realize out of the corner of my eye that this guy is inching closer and closer to me extremely slowly. Taken back, I turned around and looked him in the eye, pulling a face that suggested he explain himself. There was the longest pause between us before his expression changed to an extremely fake sense of recognition, which he followed up with "Hey man!! Do you remember me??" His eyes widened up at such a delay it was almost laughable. At this point I was quite speechless and even more taken back before, wondering if this guy really intended to pull this act off. The guy had obviously contemplated this for a long time, and his recognition of me was the furthest thing from natural I had ever seen. "No, who are you?" I replied with little to no apologetic tone in my voice, 100% sure he was just making this all up on the spot. This time he goes for the "I can't believe this" act and starts saying "Man.. I can't believe you don't remember me!" laughing between his words. This sentence was done more convincingly but he was still a far way off, since his smile was quivering and weak. I asked him where I had met him before and he said here, the other day, which was impossible since I hadn't been to that area in months. I said "Oh yeah? What was I doing?" which I said in a way that must've sounded interrogative to him (although this was unintended), and he paused, seemingly choking on the question, and stammered "I-I think you were shopping!" At this point I was no longer interested in talking to him since his jig was obviously completely up, and told him I had to go. He looked at me as if he was hurt, and blurted out "Oh, ok man, I'll catch you around dude!" still acting as though he knew me. Hilariously, I stood up and walked less than 10 meters away and stood there until my friends came out.

Although I told this story to my friends as if it were a joke, they didn't seem to think it was as funny as I did. They stood there with a bewildered, slightly unsure expression, claiming the whole situation to be extremely strange. A little while afterwards I continued to think about this guy, wondering what he wanted. He was already smoking a cigarette, so he didn't want one of mine, and he was wearing decent clothes, so wouldn't have wanted change. Something about the whole act was desperate and lonely, as if the guy spends monday to friday working and then sits around in public areas in his free time looking for potential friends. It made me wonder if he tried that move on a lot of people, expecting them to return him with a "Oh yeah! You're that guy!" and start talking to him until they realize he's a different person. He spoke coherently enough to be sane and wasn't strange enough to be not. It is easy to see him sitting around his empty apartment with nothing to do, loneliness slowly eating away his sense of social norms and eventually sanity...

parklife

h in the park
putting adults on the spot
begging five dollars
out of nervous hands

same thing everytime
"i know this sounds stupid"
"this is really embarrassing"
don't think so

11 dollars in half an hour
not bad at all
marlboros from the supermarket
stolen drinks on her shoulder

i got my bag checked but she didnt
face on the camera but not concerned
came out smiling
gave me the cans
went to the park to drink them

she shoots in the park
but only once a week
her boyfriend shoots it daily
but he goes to the gym

pale as a ghost but still eating healthy
circles around his eyes but still the same guy
shooting h in the park

i stand around in black
watching vultures with binoculars..
carving boxes out of trees

Itching and Scratching

My ex-girlfriend was a masochistic witch. I was drawn to her in the beginning by her charismatic air that only I could see and recognize as charisma. To every other person in the rooms she stepped into she had a quiet and introverted appearance, and was often ignored in bars and parties. I heard one time she stuck a small microphone up her ass which attracted the attention of many guys at our school, but some girls just happen to seem more strange than sexual when developing hobbies for anal object insertions. There were no boys in her life and I was happy to be one, since I was bored to death with the rest of the female attention I was receiving. It was more entertainment and interest than genuine affection, so when she asked me what I was doing after school one day I said “you”. The idiot seemed to be flattered by it, which I deemed a sign of low self-esteem.

At this point of time I had no idea how deep the rabbit hole went, both in the terms of her mental deviance as well as her anus, but I was willing to give it a chance and find out, rather than go home and watch TV or lie to my mum about why I smell like cigarettes. So I went to her house, which resembled a run-down shack that would disintegrate with a soft kick to the wall or a lit match on the floorboards. It wasn't the most fortunate household. It smelt sickeningly of dogs every time I went there, and I found hair stuck to the couches, bed sheets and carpets. There was no dog at the house however, never was apparently, which made me wonder what the fuck was going on. There was something strange about the place, nothing obvious enough to mention, but I would always get these itches in certain places, where I would go to scratch, but as soon as I scratch them I would find that that the itch was somewhere else, etc. For example, I would scratch the back of my head, but instead of achieving a sense of satisfaction like I would normally, I would find that it was in fact my leg that itched, and so on.

The first time at her house, she took me for a tour around the house and showed me each room with a brief description: “this is what my room looks like, this is where my father sleeps, this is where my mother sleeps...”. I never met her parents, oddly enough, but I gathered her hints and figured they didn't get along. A photo on the mantelpiece was the only description of their appearance I could get. It was a boring topic and I decided not to ask. If I didn't have to hear about them it was all the better.

So, after several months of going to her house and killing time together, it turned out she was actually fairly charming and girlish despite being the crazy slut that she was. She listened to dumb music but watched decent films, I remember, and she surprised me when she seemed to sincerely enjoy “Synecdoche, New York” when we watched it together. Anyway, I thought she was an alright chick, and sex came about several times a week which was never a bad thing.

One time, after we fucked and were lying around on the bed, me attempting to locate my itch while she tried to a tie a knot in the rubber, she asked me to hit her across the face. I stopped scratching and looked over to her with an empty head. I asked her what she said and she said it again, so I bent forward and gave her a big slap across the face. The condom flew out of her hand and splattered on the carpet. She looked up with tears in her eyes without saying a thing, and after several long seconds of silence I decided it was my cue to leave. Just as I was about to get up, however, she crawled over to me and stuck her tongue in my mouth.

Our sadomasochistic relationship continued on like this for several months. I slapped her, choked her, tripped her over with my feet. Every time she'd grab me with some immense strength that would put the local bullies to shame, and fuck me or kiss me or tell me how sexy I am.

We broke up during the summer when we had an argument over Yamataka Eye's musical credibility, and when I slammed the fly-screen door behind me it fell right off and landed on the dusty front deck. I paused for a minute wondering if I should fix it, taking more time to think about it than the first time she asked me to hit her, but decided “fuck it” and walked home. Next year we went to different universities so I never went to see her again. Besides, my bike chain was broken.

The Ridiculous Extent of Morbidity in Television

It was around 2.45pm when I was sitting in the living-room drinking a cup of tea for breakfast and lunch, slumped in a chair with a depressed and tired mind. The night before I was drinking in the city, a place I fucking despise but still hypocritically enjoy going to, and although there was no hangover this day, there were a lot of regrettable things I had done to reflect on and think about.

On this particular day I was more tired than usual, because of a retarded bike trip to a girl's house at 4 o'clock in the morning. She was leaving to go overseas to study there, and I didn't say goodbye to her properly when our taxi dropped by her house. It was predictable that I would stand in front of her house, bike on the ground, trying to sum up the courage to go knock on her window. And that's exactly what I did before getting on my bike and turning around. So, when I woke up in the afternoon after having at least 5 or 6 irritatingly confusing, alcohol-fueled dreams, I had a handful of things to think about.

Pissed off that The Blues Brothers was rolling its credits when the TV guide clearly stated it finished at 3 o'clock, I searched the 2 – 3 section in hopes of finding some other light-hearted 90's movies dedicated to stay-at-home mums. While glancing at the TV screen occasionally and being surprised by the large amount of cameo appearances (B.B. King, James Brown, Ray Charles, Bo Diddley, Isaac Hayes), I looked down at the night-time programs starting from 8.30. This is around the time the Prime network has that 10 second intermission where their bear mascot, who is never seen in any other place relating to anything, appears on the screen in some colorful bedroom telling the children viewers to fuck off and go to sleep. And this is why: three out of the five free-viewing television stations have TV programs, all at the same time, about murder. The blurb for a show on the ABC network reads: “[character] reinvestigates the death of a vagrant after a second murder raises doubts... (etc.)”. A program on the Ten network reads “what seems like a standard missing-person's case becomes more and more complicated as...”. A blurb for a program on the Prime network reads “Mrs. Barton finds her husband dead at the top of the fields tangled in a fence”, which is so gruesome that it is actually laughable. In fact, I found the relentlessly straightforward Law & Order blurb “A woman's body is found in a city garden” to be hilarious.

So, this is what people consider entertainment. These are the TV shows that people watch on a quiet Friday night while cooking their dinner, eating their dinner, writing down the groceries they need on a shopping list. The desensitization of people is global dark humour.