SHRUGS

NOT GONNA SET THE WORLD ON FIRE, BUT AT THE VERY LEAST WE'LL IGNITE A PAPER BAG FILLED WITH DOG SHIT ON SOCIETY'S DOORSTEP.

[shurgs]

Lessons Learned

I learned the end of my ability to socialise is a hard limit. There is no second wind.

And if you go over, because there's no door marked 'EXIT,' then you get to experience the joy of a spiral into full-blown Alzheimers within a four hour period.

You get so exhausted and drained that you spend the whole bus-ride home contorted in a knot, hugging yourself, necking your collar-bone, glass-eyed and vacant and reeling like a bomb-blast victim. Fully aware of how dumb you look, but unable to move an inch.

Then you sprint the whole way home, in darkness, like fury.

Today I learned the exact meaning of 'agitated.'

   Nothing even went wrong.

   And because I learned Fact 1, I learned a great deal else, as well.

I learned that I am more socially awkward than an average autistic high-schooler.

And that a wide strip of metaphorical race pavement separates me from normal human beings.

And that that's okay.

I learned that a philosophical opposition to being 'a regular teenager' doesn't enable you to skip the process. It's just a delaying tactic. Poorly advised.

F-minus, Brendan B. Would Not Adolescence again.

Don't bring this up.

[therealbbyrne-blog]

I shared this morning’s bus with an unruly crowd of people. All of them were young and beautiful, in that completely unattractive way. You know the sort. Mascara and exposed waists and denim underpants, or big shaven heads and arms and sleeveless shirts and douchy pride. For each respective gender, of course. Be reasonable.

One guy, no older than 20, had the name ‘Sylvia’ tattooed in flowery font on his (exposed) chest, and then also ‘Tyra’ printed on his neck, and I had to stop and wonder how many times you could get away with a gimmick like that before the newest girl stopped feeling special. 

It was eleven thirty in the morning, but all twenty or so were drinking. And I mean all of them: silver goonbags, plus-size Cruiser Pom-Poms, at least one flask of rum. Every few minutes, new bottles appeared from somewhere and were passed down to the front.

They carried on like nothing you’d believe. They’d shout and scream at each other, and laugh over jokes they could not possibly have heard. Generally, it was the sort of loud, frightening, merry time that others can merely witness, in horror.

What was so startling was how many of them there were, as well as how many there seemed to be. (People familiar with Sydney buses: the whole back raised section. Full to the brim, and everyone talking to everyone.) The other half was well-below capacity, but it still felt crowded because everyone scrunched up at front. That left a solid quarter of the bus firmly, violently abandoned, like the border between North and South Korea.

At one point, an old lady asked everyone to move towards the back. When no one moved she volunteered like a champion, and pushed past to stand there herself. She was apparently so repulsed by what she was witnessing that, within a minute, (and this is not an embellishment, with god as my witness) she gave up, pushed back through the crowd, and complained to the driver.

Who did nothing, as was his right. There’s no pay grade on earth that would compel someone to deal with that.

They got off a few stops before Central station — and the oddest thing happened. All the remaining passengers, who not moments ago sat in terrified silence, started talking to each other. Indiscriminately. They shared their relief. Laughed together. For a few minutes they even talked about other things — when they got on, where they were going. It was only when we reached the buses’ final destination that we stopped.

I’m not even sure what the more amazing part was. That such a group of douche-bag beach rats could be so obnoxious. Or that through uniting complete strangers, for a wonderful ten minutes these douche-bags benefited society — and in a truly magical way.

[shurgs]

Henretta tugged onto the toilet paper dispenser until there was enough paper to cover her toilet seat- it was a habit that grew out of a misinformed conversation she had with a friend: 

"You know you can contract herpies and STI's just by purely sitting on a toilet seat?"  Although Henretta found that the statement proved only to be a myth, probably perpetrated by some misinformed hack on Fox News, she couldn't help feeling slightly paranoid. Also, she thought, if she did happen to contract herpies from a toilet seat, it would be an embarrassing story to tell her relatives. She'd rather contract it the conventional way- giving some guy a blow job, kissing someone with a cold sore... not a fucking toilet seat... at least then, she would get something out of it.

END.     

[shurgs]

I want this moment in its entirety. I want this moment to condense into a shower of liquid which I can then absorb into the pores of my skin and even deeper than that so that it soaks into the marrow of my bones. I want this moment to be plastered over the bedroom walls of every angst-ridden teenager in place of genre-appropriate bands and ephemera. I want this moment to be processed into an expensive skin cream in a container with a twist-top lid which I can rub over every square millimetre of my body. I want this moment to sew itself into a full-body suit with a thread count so high that neither air nor sound nor light can pass through, then I will wear this forever. I want this moment to replace all of my vital organs so that I will rely on this moment to keep me living for however long. I want this moment to replace the sound of a heartbeat. I want this moment to be playing on a projector screen at my funeral and a DVD of the moment to be placed in my coffin. I want this moment to be photographed and for those photographs to be burnt to ash which I will then snort using rolled-up, limited-edition 500 dollar notes made in celebration of this moment. I want this moment to be digitally captured and then printed out, the printed image put through a paper shredder, then I want to eat the moment, once digitised, now shredded, in an assemblage not unlike a bowl of plain spaghetti. I want this moment to be seen only in complete darkness and complete light and everything in between. I want this moment to be a recurring dream that I never wake up from. I want this moment to be depicted in every cloud and every constellation and every fatefully arranged bird shit streak on the sidewalk. I want this moment to replace film and television and books and the internet and maybe even more than the internet if that is possible. I want this moment to become a tumor that grows from my frontal lobe until it gets so big that it pushes up against my eyes and I am blind save for seeing this moment. I want this moment to replace what my piss smells like. I want this moment to be every prayer and every song ever uttered or sung. I want this moment to be interrupted by an atom bomb explosion so that when I close my eyes the image of this moment is burned in shadow across my cornea and also across the walls and the ceiling and the floor in the places where people and things and I once stood. I want this moment.

[shurgs]

The Cafe

Fiction. I've been holding on to this since September, I guess thinking it'd mature like a fine wine if I ignored it. But since I don't care anymore, I'm posting it anyway.

***

For Sophia, the cafe’s buzz felt right. The dark wooden furniture and tasteful decoration made it feel like an establishment of great vintage, even though she knew it was a travel agency only five years ago. The barista who worked there Thursdays knew when to be chatty and when to keep quiet, and enough mid-afternoon light came through the windows to light the dust, giving the place a magical feel.

She sat alone in a corner, sipping a chai tea latte and making her way back through a pad of notes. She had an odd way of sitting when she read: she would lean back in her chair and rest the book right on the edge of the desk. She was summarising Vonnegut for a test; rewording his themes and quotes into easier phrases for memorisation. ‘Everything is beautiful, and nothing hurts.’ But her chai latte was getting cold, her back was getting sore, and her pen hand trembled.

She was preoccupied.

Sophia dropped her pen and inhaled slowly. She closed her eyes and sat exactly still. She realised she wasn’t breathing, but then kept it that way. Her heart began to drum, louder and louder in her chest. She held on when her head started swimming. When her eyelids begged to open. It began to burn deep in her chest but she kept her breath in and her eyes closed longer -- until she was utterly limp. Only then, she exhaled.

She sat up. Picking up her tea cup and huddling her shoulders, she began to watch the cafe’s patrons.

Reading stranger’s faces was Sophia’s guilty pleasure. There is a certain vulnerability in people on their own. They drop their guard. Their faces show their thoughts with such intimacy you can almost make out the story behind it. Almost, but not quite – that was the crucial thing. It was the mystery she loved: noticing tiny moments of grander stories and never discovering the rest.

There was a well-dressed lady sitting three tables down, hands clasped before her and a far away smile on her face. As Sophia watched, the woman absently massaged her ring finger. She noticed her own hands, and her smile dropped. Like she was discovering a traitor.

There was a slender old man reading the news near a window. He had a tweed suit on, and his hat was on the desk. A news article annoyed him, it seemed: he got angry and turned the page with a grimace.

A young pair shared a meal, talking quickly. He joked shyly, she laughed. She talked and gestured, he smiled. The two were in tune like the strings of an instrument.

Over on the opposite end of the cafe, behind a dividing wall, Sophia noticed someone else: a young woman, gazing absently. Her hair was very short; it looked recently cut. She blinked and noticed they had made eye contact. They looked away in unison.

Sophia became aware of herself again. The chair opposite her was as empty as a wound. She noticed her thoughts and cringed, like she’d discovered a traitor. She focused back on her work, but she was tired. Words blended into their neighbours. Her eyes slid off the page. She went back to scoping out the cafe’s other patrons

The people looked different now. Sophia looked at the couple again and noted how strained the guy looked, how the girl’s sugar packets had been shredded into a pile. They both gesticulated with their spoons. Their mirrored bodies held slight differences: he looked at her face on, she looked at an angle, consciously holding eye contact. His legs were folded and his arms were held in front of him. Her shoulders were bunched. Their light conversation had a subtle strain to it, like a well-rehearsed play.

She looked at the old man in the corner and wondered why he frowned. Did he read news of developments he did not understand? Steps forward in directions he despised? His lip contorted.

She moved her eyes along, to the woman with the short hair. She was staring into the middle distance, glass-eyed and limp, her face a fortress. They blinked simultaneously.

She was amazed, actually, that she could be so blind, sitting alone, with different hair and different clothes. How could it be that she couldn’t recognise herself? Staring at her own reflection she chuckled slightly. She thought that this would be the way of things now. Now that everything is different.

Sophia’s eyelids shut for the longest time -- until everything went dark -- and then she returned to work.

She didn’t notice when the couple let down their facades and talked out their problems. They gripped hands in the middle of the table and talked and talked. She worked away when they left the cafe: feet in step and heads held high. As they closed the door the girl pointed to something and they laughed.

As the shadows lengthened, the old man finished the paper and left it on the table. He told the barista she could keep it and she thanked him by his first name. They talked for a while, and the old man said he’s looking forward to meeting her partner after all this time. The word was mumbled, but the barista smiled sweetly, asking him to come again soon. Then she sighed and went back to washing cups. Unwatched, the old man leant on his cane as he left.

She sat in a cafe, pouring over notes, rewording Vonnegut. 

Everything was beautiful, and it hurt.

[shurgs]

Eating in Sydney's South-West: Cabra-battered dog

This is the first instalment of 'Eating in Sydney's South-West', in which I outline places to eat that are genuinely good, and aren't just tourist traps - medicore, overrated meals, as reflected in their absurd prices.

In this part, I'm going to go through places to eat in Cabramatta, which you've no doubt heard about as the former heroin capital of Australia, now the food capital of New South Wales. Cabramatta has a huge range of food, and you can pretty much find anything here (as long as it's Asian). I'm going to go through a few things that you should eat if you ever find yourself hungry here.

I grew up in Cabramatta and I remember that -- nope, okay, you don't care, you're just hungry and (relatively) poor, so I'll just shut up and get to the food.

****

WHAT: Pad Thai 

[picture]

HOW MUCH: $9 for chicken, beef or tofu, $11 for seafood

WHERE: Savann Restaurant, opposite the Post Office on Hugh Street

WORDS: If there were a person whose biological parents were the most beautiful people in the world, and then a wizard appeared and magically transformed that person into sauce, they would turn into Savann's peanut sauce. The sauce is so amazing that you'd think that your tastebuds died and went to heaven - the sauce is just sweet enough, and very rich that you'll inadvertently moan "MMMM!" as you slurp it up. The noodles are consistently perfect, neither so firm that you have to chew and chew and chew and chew and chew, nor so soft and sloppy that you feel like you're eating a ghost. The beef and chicken are always juicy. I have never been let down by how tasty and filling this is, and I'm told that the vegan Pad Thai (without eggs and meat) is very good as well.

DANGER!!! While the Pad Thai from Savann is the best I've had, I would not recommend many of the other dishes as standalone meals. The ox-tongue, for example, can be flavourless and dry, and the fried quail quite ordinary. If you do want to try the other dishes, though, you'd be better off dining with 3-5 friends so that you can order however many dishes and split the cost, paying $10-15 each, which is quite cheap considering how full you will be.

****

WHAT: Sweet sweet sandwiches

[picture]

HOW MUCH: $5

WHERE: Simply Delicious, opposite the train station

WORDS: I know I said that you can have any food that you'd like in Cabramatta as long as it's Asian, but this is an exception. Simply Delicious is a family-owned deli with an impressive range of cured meats, cheeses, and antipasto available to put into your sandwich. The sandwiches in question are huge and can contain just about whatever you'd like, with an unlimited selection of meats and salads for the flat rate of $5. I'm not sure what the bread is, but it is very good. 

I can't recommend anything because I always ask the lovely Serbian girl behind the counter if she could make me a 'surprise sandwich', a question to which she responds, with a smile, "Sure thing," and stands there for a while, deliberating which combination of meats and cheeses to put together, before making an incredibly tasty and filling sandwich.

DANGER!!! For some reason, the sandwiches tend to get very greasy, which takes away the crunchiness of the bread crust (which I love), and makes your hands feel really, really gross as they clutch at the now-transparent paper bag. The best way to avoid this is to wolf it down as quickly as possible. 

****

WHAT: Com Do Ga Chien Gion (Fried chicken with tomato rice) - but also just about any other Vietnamese meal that is not pho

[picture]

HOW MUCH: $8

WHERE: Tuong Lai, just off John Street on Belvedere Arcade

WORDS: Tuong Lai means 'future' in Vietnamese, something you would never associate with the elderly Vietnamese owners and unintentional minimalism of the interiors of the restaurant. The walls are bare, save for the large menus in Vietnamese, Chinese, and English (there aren't any printed ones), and the tables just large enough for your meal and a drink.

The message is clear: it's all about the food. You will often find the restaurant packed, because its meals are of similar quality to that of the upscale Thanh Binh, but without the stupid prices that only wasteful people would pay.

The Com Do Ca Chien Gion here is an outstanding dish, not just from the menu, but from all of Cabramatta. Whereas the chicken in all other restaurants is deep-fried, here it is baked or barbequed, resulting in an extraordinary taste that I can't begin to pinpoint. Just trust me when I say that it is great.

DANGER!!! Don't be fooled by the seedy-looking interior. I haven't gotten food poisoning from this place yet, so it should be fine for you. I had a hard time picking between the com tam, banh canh suong, cha gio, and com ga chien gio, so I just chose the most unique dish they had. But if you can, definitely come back and try the others. They are just as good.

****

WHAT: Pork rolls (Banh Mi Thit)

HOW MUCH: $3

WHERE: The arcade opposite Belvedere Arcade

WORDS: The fresh bread makes this all worth it. Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and completely delightful throughout. My biggest concern with pork rolls in Cabramatta is the large amount of butter they put on the roll, which can often leave you feeling sick, or guilty, or both. This isn't an issue at...well I don't know the name of this place, but it's the only bakery in an arcade.

There is usually a line, but don't stray to other bakeries. Viet Hoa, a bakery that has been in operation for a long time further down John Street, pre-makes their pork rolls, and sells these stale rolls for $4, even though they are smaller.

DANGER!!! Don't pay too much attention to which hands are used to collect customers' money and which hands are used to prepare your bread roll. As it goes, ignorance is bliss.

****

WHAT: Salt and pepper fish

HOW MUCH: Market price + $5 - I got Salt and Pepper Snapper for $20

WHERE: The fish market and food-selling place opposite end of the arcade where Viet Hoa is on John Street

WORDS: Although this is a guide to cheap food, if you ever did want to splurge, this is probably the best place for it. Choose your fish at the market, get it cleaned and gutted, and then take it to the shop opposite to get it fried in salt-and-pepper batter for an extra $5. Fresh fish is delicious!

DANGER!!! To get the most out of your money, choose a fresh fish. You can determine how fresh it is by looking at the fish's cold, literally dead-eyed stare: a greater degree of cloudiness indicates that the fish has been out for longer, so avoid these. The fish, once fried, will be given to you in an aluminium tray covered with cling wrap, and will get soggy if you don't eat it as soon as you can.

****

So there it is. A starter's guide to cheap eats in Cabramatta.

[shurgs]

GET CRUNK

Sitting around a sticky wooden table in a bar filled with the warm, orange glow of aging incandescent light bulbs, and knocking back a few schooners with mates is easily one of the best things in life. You’re there with no purpose other than drinking and chatting, and that’s exactly what you do. If you ever doubted what your friends meant to you, why you still bother talking to them, this is the perfect moment to rediscover why. You will be reminded over and over again that these are the funniest, most intelligent people you know. This makes it a little hard to track the increasingly large hit to your bank account, but that’s a problem for tomorrow, because, right now, it’s all about bonding and enjoying each other’s company.

I never saw these “merits” of drinking alcohol when I was in high school, mostly because, at the parties I went to, people acted as if they were racing to see who could feel worse more quickly. And that’s how it would always end up - there would be at least one guy who got overexcited and went, “OMG ALCOHOL AT PARTY LET’S GET MAD BLIND!!!!” An hour later, they would be surrounded by a group of less-than-competent friends armed with water, bad advice, and cameras.

These were parties where people would stand around a table lined up with disgusting liqueurs and spirits, shooting these drinks because they couldn’t stand the taste. This wasn’t necessarily because they were new to drinking - I would say that it was because the drinks themselves were gross. Between the overwhelmingly foul stench of butterscotch and alcohol in Baileys, the blended taste of smegma and Chinese medicinal herbs in Jagermeister, and that distinctive taste of burnt rubber asshole in El Toro tequila, it wasn’t hard to see why forcing down combinations of these horrid concoctions would end up in a bad night.

So, only seeing people drinking gross shit, acting like huge dumbasses, and then throwing up, crying, and passing out made me oppose the entire notion of drinking. It didn’t seem like a good time to me. It was like everyone was drinking to forget. I didn’t feel like there were many moments to enjoy.

Sure, you have a little bonding moment when you yell, “Cheers!”, lick the salt off your hand, gag on that disgusting shot of tequila, and suck on a lemon wedge. And maybe you can laugh about how WAYYYYYYYSSSTTTTTEEED someone got. But when that’s all over, you’re left with huge blanks in your memory, and not because you’d had too much to drink, but because nothing happened. You talk to people about insignificant things, dance, hook up - whatever, it’s all meaningless, and you will forget it all anyway. 

Because you’re drinking to forget.

You do have to wonder how it’s come to this. How people measure the enjoyability of their night by the volume of poison they sipped, shot, and chugged through the night, how there are entire stores dedicated to selling thousands of different drinks that all make you forget.

Take my two trips to Glenfield Cellars as an example. The first time I was there, I was looking for beers, and asked an employee what he recommended. He pointed to a plastic bottle that said ‘Fat Ass Scrumpy’, with a bitter cider that, if I were looking to get knocked out quickly and cheaply, would do the job easily, because of its low price and high alcohol content. When I asked for a beer that actually tasted nice, he pointed to Harrison’s Ngahere Gold, and told me it had high alcohol content, and added that it tasted pretty good. I ended up buying a six-pack of beer and those two bottles of cider, which, true to word, got me a personal best of 8 in Bop It!

The second time, I was with Matt, who was looking to buy a carton of Strongbow, but was advised against it by the cashier, who instead recommended 3 Oaks for its higher alcohol content. Matt ended up getting Strongbow anyway.

You can see what the attitudes to drinking were in Glenfield Cellars: it was an activity best gotten over and done with by drinking things with the highest alcohol content, regardless of taste. It’s the same attitude shown at the parties I’ve gone to, and it’s not one that I myself favour, having had memories of throwing up and intense headaches and not much else.

I think it’s sad that there is this culture of binge drinking which fucks it up for those of us who don’t drink to get mad wasted. Not that it matters for most people who aren’t me, but both my mum and boss think that drinking is something to be frowned upon, something that wastes time and health that only the stupid should engage in. I guess that drinking as an activity itself, drinking for the sake of getting drunk, is pretty dumb. But that isn't the only time when people drink. People drink as a part of socialising, as a way of winding down from a stressful week, as a way of sharing something with another person.

I would prefer for people’s perceptions of drinking to more of the latter, one of moderation, rather than the former, a downwards spiral into alcoholism or whatever, because it is difficult to explain why I smell like beer to my mum, who’s picked up my sister from enough parties with people passed out all over from binge drinking to be convinced that all drinking is binge drinking, which simply is not true.

I’m not urging everyone to go out and have a beer with your mates right now, else you miss out on an integral part of friendship and life, but it is one of my favourite things to do, because sitting down and sharing a drink means that you’re not rushing off somewhere that will close soon, or waiting for someone to finish work, or otherwise too busy to talk to each other properly. Drinking with mates is great, not because you’re drinking with mates, but because you’re with mates, and that’s all there is to it. Each soaks up the other’s company, and you really do get a sense that you are with amazing people.

And that’s why I drink - not to forget all the painful shit in my life, but to remind myself that the people in my life, my friends, are literally the best people I know.

Obligatory:

- Stephen

[shurgs]

¡Buenos musclós, mamalita!

We laughed at the idea that the only people doing Spanish in the summer would be people without lives (otherwise they'd be doing something more worthwhile) or without money (or else they'd be in Spain). As it turned out, I was the one lacking a life and money. Everyone else had nose piercings and dyed hair and bright clothes and stories to tell.

Listening to Chrissie describe her adventure down the Amazon, staring at toucans as her spiritual guide shot peyote at the other end of the boat, and admiring the way that Liv carried herself with complete certainty, I arrived at the conclusion that my life, thus far, had amounted to nothing.

I could have chosen any form for my life to take -- a leaf blowing in the wind, a car crash, even a wolf, perhaps -- but I refused to take responsibility for any of it, and my life, by default, turned into a metal ball in a wooden labyrinth.

That's how I've been living my life. I throw everything in the air and tell myself that fate will take me where I need to go, but I'm really doubting the merits of this. I'm a metal ball rolling around with no responsibility, letting fate tilt the board. What scares me most, of course, is that I'm going to have to bump into a lot of walls and avoid a lot of holes to get where I need to go. There's only one destination and countless obstacles.

This is what I said I wanted a month or two ago, and, now that I have it, I really doubt it will pay off.

[shurgs]

CC:

My Gmail inbox has been open in a tab for the past two hours. It says Inbox (38). Thirty-eight e-mails that I've ignored and "forgotten" to reply to over the last two weeks. I'm putting it off right now but eventually they'll all be replied to, but to what avail? Nearly every e-mail starts and ends the same. As stupid and humblebraggy this sounds, my blog is starting to overwhelm me. There simply aren't enough hours in the day and days in the week to attend showings and blog events, take stupid posed outfit photos in front of my house, work three jobs, attend to two internships and the five minutes I spend in the shower daily, sitting on the floor, trying to relax.  Half the reason I go to the fashion-related events and showings is to make meaningless connections that'll probably come in handy in the future when I start to embark on a power-tripping pursuit of a career in an elusive and fickle industry.

And in between jobs and internships and whatnot, there are five minute gaps that weasle their way into my life. These gaps are what I've been trying to eliminate. I've been trying so hard to fill them with work and other perceived obligations so I don't have to attend to these brief moments that take over my conscious with an intensity that I'd much rather forget. There's no use in spending any more time on it, I say to myself. When these five minute moments come, I feel betrayed. I feel betrayed by my own willpower and I feel betrayed by time, like I've entered into some sort of agreement with it. I feel angry because I've bartered all my time for things to distract with me from these five minute moments and if they still come then what the fuck is the perpetual exhaustion and the hour long train trips worth? Nothing. 

Today is my day off and that five-minute moment has dragged on to be five hours. I guess this is the reason I don't stay at home.

[shurgs]

Walks, cities, dawn.

It's 3:30 am. I'm not tired. I won't even feel sleepy for three hours, and I've yet to clean up dinner. Insomnia isn't the word for it, though: I sleep plenty, and when I am asleep I can hardly be woken. No, I sleep wrong.

Sometimes it's a curse. I wake up when everyone winds down. I peak when everyone yawns. I fall asleep to the birds at dawn.

I used to hate dawn, actually. People associate dawn with hope and beginnings and Weetbix and the sort of soul-affirming runs generally performed on commercials by women with cheery smiles and absurdly supportive bras, but for me dawn had a horror to it. I'd done it again. My early night has failed. It's come to this. I'll suffer tomorrow. Dawn used to be a cosmic Game Over screen.

But while I disagree with the Sultana Bran connotations, the one thing I do agree with on dawn is that it is undeniably pretty. 

When it's cloudy, the sky at dawn is a shockingly deep blue. I cannot understate the blueness of predawn light. It doesn't just sit there quietly. It invades your personal space. It slathers itself over everything it touches. It's like the whole world is swimming, right outside your window.

But when the sky is clear, the sunrise is colourful. I don't know why it is, but I've rarely seen a fiery dawn: they're almost always pink, or purple. It's a generally magenta experience. It even feels wrong. Reds and yellows and oranges are for dusks. Dawn is blue.

And that is the benefit of a fucked up sleep cycle. 

I can go for a walk at bedtime and see the city wake up. Locations change so completely you could swear they were different places. Martin Place at five, six am is full of joggers and old men. Fitness freaks and women with dogs. The people who'll go home shortly, and shower and change and leave for work. Three hours later though and it's like a different city.The tourists and businessmen arrive. The park becomes both more diverse and more united. Ethnic minorities with cameras and families with children start walking through, along with black-suited nine-to-fivers with frowns and coffee.

It's become a hobby of mine. I love the exhaustion of a five hour walk, and the dilation of time. I'm scared of the day I decide to leave the house and find I've run out of places to go. I love seeing new places, and seeing old places in a new way.

Today I'm going to the coast.

[shurgs]

The man who sits with the pigeons

There's $6000 for first place in the Judith Wright poetry competition, and the deadline for entries is tomorrow. I've realised that, with my newly-found freedom, I could write something and make $5980 profit. So that's what I've been trying to do since yesterday, except I haven't really tried because poetry isn't really my thing, and it's difficult. I don't really get the need for line breaks in poems.

Anyway!

What I've been trying to write about is something that sticks out in my memory, although I don't know why. It's not really going anywhere in verse, so I'm going to try to stick it out in prose, and see if it's even worth trying to express as a poem.

There's a place called Freedom Plaza in Cabramatta, with a huge sculpture of an Asian gate saying something like FREEDOM, HAPPINESS, FOOD (I don't remember the last word, but it's something ridiculous like 'FOOD'). Pigeons flock there, despite the Asian children who chase them while screaming and giggling in delight, because the elderly like to sit on the benches maroon and toss chips, breadcrumbs, or rice to the pigeons. Subsequently, everything is covered in pigeon shit, and there is a strong, musty smell that permeates the plaza.

Opposite the gate sculpture are bronze statues, a pair of dragons. This is where buskers usually sit. Often, the busker is an old Aboriginal guy who strums tuneless chords on a guitar that he holds upside down, or drums on old biscuit tins, or just listens to AM radio on his battery-powered radio. The silver coins on the folded scarf in front of him don't usually add up to more than three dollars.

Once, when I was eight, there was a busker who I'd never seen. He sat on a blue milk crate, streaked white with bird shit and pressure marks. Most prominently, he wore a parka that was once bright yellow, now darkened with blotches of green and black dirt. He didn't have fingers, just hardened black stumps that looked like ginger. In his palms, he clutched a scratched silver harmonica to his lips, wheezing a melody that was overly joyful. Music too happy for a man who should not know of happiness: a man in a filthy parka; a man without fingers; a man sitting in pigeon shit.

I asked my mum for money to give him, but she said that it wouldn't have made a difference. I thought that, if I didn't help him, he'd die. I cried. 

These days, when I walk by Freedom Plaza, I look out for the man with stumps for fingers, but I haven't seen him since. So maybe he is dead.

I am still plagued with guilt to this day, but I'm not sure why. Logically, the two dollars that I could have given would not have gotten him much. Three banana fritters. Two pork dumplings. Three bread rolls. That's about it. That would have been a one-off thing. One day in a life of suffering. Would it have made his life that much better?

The little sense that I can make of my remorse for this man is based off the fact that he died with neither face nor name, no identity beyond his filthy clothes, those black stumps, that harmonica. After maybe forty, fifty years of his life and identity accumulating, he lost it all. No one knew who he was, no one cared. In fact, his death would have been a good thing. Less guilt for passersby, fewer offending odours to take away the business of street vendors. His existence a burden.

Ah, I don't know. I don't if he's really dead or if he 'deserved' it or why his fingers were cut off. All I know is that I hate the smell of pigeons, and that harmonicas make me sad with their wistful wheezing.

I cannot turn this into a poem.

[shurgs]

Letters that I wish I had the balls to send

Dear Man-Floozy,

It was Halloween when we first met. We were at a bar that had karaoke. I was with my friends that night. We were all drunk, singing to horrible 90's music that we all knew the words to. The night smelt like body odor and the carpet rank of beer, but we enjoyed it. We booed those who were great singers and cheered those who failed to hold a note.

You came in right as I was approaching the bar. Our eyes met and you gave me a little smile. You were in undies and had two blow-up dolls taped to your ass. It looked as though you were leading some rim-job-congo-line. After a while of trying to figure what you were going as, it finally occurred to me that you were going as The Human Centipede.

For some odd reason, you pulled it off, you pulled off dysfunctional and triviality so well to the point that it was charming. What can I say, I was impressed.

We made eyes all night until you finally came over and spoke to me. We connected, maybe not as well as the blow-up dolls attached to your ass, but there was something there... I would say that it was probably like the connection a mother has to her child, but that would be wrong. I would hate to start lactating every time you cried.  I wanted to kiss you, give you one of those drunkenly kisses where hot beer breath passes through each others mouths, but my friends were leaving, and I had to follow. I gave you my number in a quick rush and headed for the door, trying my best not to fall on top of patrons and knock things over.

That night I ended up exchanging my hot beer breath with a bong instead. You texted me the next day. I was over the moon. Human Centipede guy texted me! The following weeks we had dates, drank wine and spoke about the stuff we liked - books, cooking, journalism - it was all great. We kissed in alleyways and sent 'Kiddie-Porn' jokes while we were apart.

Maybe it was our opposite immune systems that brought us together - they say that you're attracted to those who have opposite immune systems because it increases your progeny's chances at survival - trying to tell us that we needed to consummate our love and make superior offspring so that our lineage could stand the test of time. Maybe our babies would live so long that the story will make it to the local paper, where there would be a photo of our future child, smiling with her still strong healthy teeth, sitting before a cake with 150 candles... 

Anyway, in short, though it has been two weeks and four dates, I just wanted to say that I love you and that I want to have your babies. Yes, a thousand at a time if it needed to be.

I'll be expecting your knock on the door where you're bent on one knee, asking to marry me. I'll be waiting for you, Mytralalas.

[shurgs]

When you have a hundred friends, losing one isn't so bad. When you have about three, losing one is a third of the people you talk to. A third of your daily human contact. Losing one friend is not something I can afford.

Over the past few days I've received a succession of phone calls from people I haven't seen or spoken to in months. I'm not the friendliest person you'll meet but there was nothing that stopped me from enjoying their company at the time. Things got in the way and those things led to other things and other things. Their presence faded in my life until eventually I was left with a Facebook news feed full of ghosts and empty promises to catch up, soon. I learnt how to enjoy spending time on my own.

He rang me and told me that him and his girlfriend had just broken up. "What? When were you in a relationship?" Could I really have been so clueless that my friends had entered and left behind whole relationships without it even registering to me?  "You never had the time to see me or talk to me, so I thought I wouldn't push it." they tell me. "You're never there to talk to anymore", they say.

I'm too tired to wrap up this reflection/journal entry/whatever smoothly and with any sort of finality so. 

[shurgs]

VHS

I can't sleep.

Lately it's been that I come alive around the midnight hour.

In the shade before yesterday morning's sunrise I typed a lengthy email; half apologetic, half vindictive, that I had been putting aside for a while. I also typed up the short post directly below this.

24 hours before that, I was writing without pause for one and a half hours. I was hemorrhaging words and there was no one around to stop the bleeding.

It was amazing.

I said to myself not long after, somewhat self-assuredly, "I guess this is what a writer must feel like."

This might not be so much of a revelation to others, but it is to me. For the first time in a long while, I feel that not only can I be bothered to write, but I'm able to do it in a way that feels (somehow simultaneously) effortless and challenging.

I was thinking about all of this as I stared into darkness, waiting for thoughts to quieten, as a teacher standing in front of a classroom would wait for raucous chatter to subside.

I focused on the snores of the dog underneath my bed. I slowed my pace to match the rhythm of her breathing, and faded into sleep.

I napped for a little before hearing paws tapping against my door (I'm a light sleeper). Acknowledging my part in this ritual, I opened the door and stumbled back into bed.

The dark hurt my eyes.

As is common for an overactive mind in times where it is least needed, I remembered a certain memory.

I was standing at, or should I say standing below the counter in Civic Video, having picked out my 3 tapes for that week.

$1.10 movie rentals on Tuesday had become routine since living with my new guardian, and I took my time scanning the shelves and reading the blurbs, determined to make use of my weekly quota to the fullest.

I peered up at the lady behind the counter, who I now realise was probably not as old as I thought, it's more likely she was around my age now.

She had a familiar face, and I instantly recognised it. She was the PE teacher in training who had been doing practical work at my primary school a few weeks prior.

I remember that we got along well, and I participated more when she was directing what ball games we would play.

Knowing myself around that age, it was most probably because of a certain fondness for her that motivated me.

I put the plastic boxes on the surface between us and timidly looked at her smile. I didn't bring up that I remembered her, I was too shy.

"Oh! Fancy seeing you here! How are you going today Matthew?"

I was ecstatic, but I didn't show it. I just nodded slightly and said, "Good thanks."

I handed her the money and while she gave me the tapes I asked if she was going to come back to St. Joseph's again.

I forget her answer, but the next thing I said was, "It's my birthday today."

I imagine I probably smiled directly after saying that.

She smiled back then said, "Hmm, is that right?" and visibly thought about it for a second. She leant down behind the counter, stood up, and held out her hands towards me.

In her hands were huge strips of silver foil. Each strip was actually comprised of individually wrapped rectangular sections, linked at each end.

They were part of a promotion around that time. Inside packets of chips were those little foil rectangles, and once you opened the slippery buggers, they were covered in salt and grease you see, you'd be rewarded with a holographic Digimon card.

Later when I got home I would count over 100 cards.

"Here you go. Happy birthday."

She winked as she said it.

It wasn't until I typed those words that it actually dawned on me. That was my birthday.

I just flicked through the calendar on my phone, and lo and behold, on May 29, 2001, it was a Tuesday.

It was my 9th birthday.

I can't remember what else I did that day.

I forget what the movies I rented were.

[shurgs]

A Brief and Vague History of Certain People I Have Met and Pithy Statements About Them

What’s in a name?  

I attempted to write something about a young man doing some sort of thing, while other things happened.

But I got held up on the first sentence:

“X couldn’t sleep.”

I couldn’t think of a damned name.

Well, I could, and I thought of many, but each name felt inextricably tied to people I knew with that name, and the ideas affiliated with them.

Like ingredient lists on jars of sandwich spread brands, each name had a set of qualities or short description attached to it.

Of course I knew most of these connotations would not be shared by other people, they were needlessly ignorant and probably baseless.

Still, I picked up jar after jar, turned it in my hand, squinted at at the miniscule print, and swiftly returned back into the shelf, unsatisfied.

George: Probably chubby.

Aaron: Definitely obnoxious.

Max: Deceptively named.

Ronnie: Vapid and attention seeking.

Michael: A mummy’s boy.

Ryan: A cunt.

Jordan: A tall cunt.

Even the names with positive qualities weren’t  any good. They didn’t fit the character I wanted, the one that hadn’t actually been formed properly yet.

So I kept searching through the jars until I eventually gave up.

Some of the labels were longer than others:

Kayla: You know many of them but you don’t ‘know’ any of them. From face value they seem pretty boring

Kate: You once wanted to try this brand constantly as a child. It had the most attractive packaging you’d ever seen, but you were disappointed when the condiment not only looked like shit, it tasted worse.

Mark: You only bought this for the free toy it comes bundled with.

Matthew: The literary equivalent of auto-fellatio. Keep out of reach of wannabe writers.

[shurgs]

HAPPYSMEGDOG / DICKILEAKS: JESS T PUBLIC BREAKDOWN

What's in a name?

For notorious Sydney blogger Jessica Tran, there may be a bit more than we realise.

An exclusive collaborative investigation between Happysmegdog and DICKILEAKS reveals that the seemingly light-hearted, sweet-but-cheeky humour that she has become known for may very well have not been the sole reason behind her seemingly innocuous Twitter handle @fartssica. 

The real story? Jessica is a bum face.

One out of only four others in history, she is afflicted with a condition from birth where all orifices on her face do not have the usual functions we would expect from a mouth, nose and ears.

They are in fact small anal cavities; it is only through extensive cosmetic surgery, and a lifetime of training that she is able to converse normally without anyone knowing.

In our shocking new video interview (embedded below), she admits, between near-hysterical, flatulent sobs, that it has always been a source of embarrassment for her.

"I'm so sorry, I can't help it," she moaned, just barely audible over the steady stream of farts burbling uncontrollably from her face. "I'm so embarassed... please stop filming this."

Jessica, who has since hastily changed her Twitter handle to the more mature @JessLovesFred, has been unavailable for further interviewing. 

Stream the interview below:

sorry Jess

[shurgs]

The Strange Love Doctor, or How I Stopped, To Learn Worrying and Bomb Love: A post in five parts

I don't know what I'm supposed to be writing here. Digital therapy sessions? Deep-held secrets, revealed at last? Pseudo-meaningful quasi-insights on the shape and direction of the world? Thrilling accounts of how my date last Friday went? All of these?

I'll go with all of these, but very briefly. I don't want to emphasise any one aspect, so each one will be about one hundred words.

Well. Exactly one hundred words. You guys better appreciate how difficult that is to pull off. (It's difficult.)

Part One

Thirty-three blue metres

Want to know a secret?

I can swim. Through eight years of well-meaning programs, I always failed to learn. In high school I stopped trying. Half-way through I found I could actually swim fine, which forced me to lie.

In summer afternoons, whole dorm buildings would empty into the pool: echoing splashes and shouts were inescapable. It just wasn’t a sound that tempted me.

Swimming isn’t scary for the nudity or water. It’s trust. For me, swimming in public is helplessness. Being held under, ignored, or pitied. But mostly, it is one sentence:

“How don’t you know how to swim?”

Part Two

I am alone with the things I have done.

I quote that line a lot. My ears hear it mean different words to the ones written. They hear the one reason to improve yourself.

I am a self-perfectionist. Isn’t everybody? If we were rich and funny, fit and loved, attractive, motivated then we’d get what we want, right? When you look in a mirror, you might not mind the sight, but you’re never quite the person you want to be.

The idea: to ‘love myself for who I am’ galls me. It misses the point. Accepting myself now might mean giving up being someone better.  Maybe someone enough.

Part Three

In which I apologise for the angst.

Although really now. Just because someone appears to be a reasonably grounded human being doesn’t make them one. You guys know I’m a neurotic iceberg with an inferiority complex, depressive tendencies and Daddy issues, right? That hasn’t escaped your notice behind the well-groomed facade of faux-confidence and extroversion, has it?

It has?

Oh jeez, man. How to break it to you.

Problem is, I don’t know what else to talk about. No long-running relationships to heal and my social skills are quite good, so little traction there. What am I supposed to write? “Today I didn’t leave the house again?”

Part Four

Stephen wanted to know how to ask a girl out except he asked me instead of someone who knows.

I am blatantly using titles to cheat on the word-count now.

Step one: meet all your friends’ friends. The easiest way to meet eligible (wo)men is move in many circles, because talking to attractive strangers is hard and scary.

 Step two: be somebody. Not a witty or important somebody: just the best, most somebody-ish ‘you’ you can be. This is not to woo them. That’s in the wind. But only your best ‘you’ can move to step three.

Step three: “Hey, you want to meet up for coffee sometime?”

Step four: meet up for coffee.

Step five: fuck it up.

Part Five

How to fuck up a date: observations.

 If she suggests “The Spot” and Google Street Maps marks a cafe, assume that cafe is “The Spot,” and not the district.

Wear the best Person impression you can, then silently beg each other to be first to end the horror.

Girls who read widely and watch nothing and boys who watch widely and read nothing may between them lick platters clean, but they can hardly discuss meals.

  How to measure success: “It was lovely... catching up. We should...

  “...

    “...

  “...do this again.”

   Completely absent physical contact is a surefire sign.