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.