Reflections on Melbourne and 3am conversational dogs

So I'm back home, and all is well - I went to Melbourne, no one stabbed me, I didn't roll around drunk and make a fool of myself (well, I did break a toilet door, but that was an accident) and to the delight of everyone I am now home safe and sound. I am annoyed at the nature of time as it seems to be allocated unfairly. Six hours in a hotel room, shut away from the world in a spa listening to Blondie, that goes in about three seconds, but six hours at work, that seems to take twice as long...not fair is it? Melbourne is now getting London like not in the awesomeness of it's shopping but in the veracity and intimidation of it's sales pressure. In the airport, some guy said to me "hey mate, I've got a question for ya!" and then when I didn't respond to his amusing sales pitch was kind of bagging me out to his semi attractive cohort for being rude. I was pursued many times by leaflet givers, who by Melbourne law can't speak to you so they just thrust bits of paper at chin level, and a Big Issue seller with tourettes who after mentioning the publication he was shilling would mutter "ferkcunferk" under his breath, obviously against his will, but it was hardly the warm embrace of K-Tel. By the time a man in Virgin had disrupted my idle flicking through the Hannah Montana back catalogue to try and pressurize me into buying something, I had had enough and just walked off. It's terrible that no one can just walk through a shop without goons hassling them, but there was one person I felt sorry for - no, not the artist/busker with his "I can't afford paintbrushes, give generously" sign, but the guy who was badly dressed as a badly dressed hamburger outside the hamburger store, with one eye to look out of, who was getting kicked up the arse time and time again...I know everybodys gots to make a living, but even with my aversion to sales pressure, I'd have taken his leaflet...then kicked him up the arse...what, it's fun...

I stayed at my friends house in St Kilda - I really like my friend, he's a good guy, but him and his wife are pretty high fliers - they are Qantas and I am Kendall so to speak - and they put this enormous pressure on themselves, like she works about 60 hours a week and for fun is doing a big fancy degree. Sometimes if you go there she's all stressed and you can mistake it for pure frost, but I'm oblivious, I just watch my Disney films (the one this morning was awesome, it was about two twins who played bask...um...I'll shut up now) and don't worry about her. It's a form of understanding. However, since I last went over there, and I haven't been there since the wedding with Daniel Giansiracusa and so on, they now have a dog, and after about five minutes, I kind of worked out why they have a dog. It's to fill in awkward gaps in their conversation. I really believe that they struggle for things to talk about - it's not that they don't get on, it's just they are funny in their ways, in the middle of an argument they call each other honey and sweetheart. I imagine their conversations are quite intense and edgy, so to break the ice, they go "Oh, look, the dogs eating my shoes! Awwww!" - so the dog, like Maddox Jolie, has to stay cute, or they will replace it with another dog that breaks the ice in times of stress. My family has a strict policy against dogs being taken in as part of the family and spoken to as if they are human - Mums friends Dad has a dog who apparently likes to eat it's dinner at one house and it's breakfast at the other, as if it's a restaurant critic - and my friends wife was having a go at my friend for not cooking the dogs chicken "as the dog likes". As I looked over at the dog, the dog was making mincemeat out of a coathanger, so I'm guessing the dog isn't that fussy there kiddo. However, I realised in the morning that, in fairness, I had begun filling in little gaps in the conversation by referencing the dog...oh did I mention the dog was so funny, he bit my finger, oh how amusing...and it was actually a lot better than having to talk to her about her DVD she had on, The Hills (Adam Hills wasn't in it) or her listening to my thoughts on Britney. Incidentally, the dog jumped on my bed at 3 in the morning, not the first time I've slept with a dog...am I right folks! Am I...is this thing on?

I tend to find with my friends, as long as I can stick to non controversial topics and kind of steer the conversation onto general matters, I'm OK - I'm very good at ignoring fights and flare ups - however, what I do find is that when my friends start relationships, I do more talking to their partners than they do, and it's kind of odd. None of my friends have been in super healthy relationships - at least, so says the guy who's main relationship with someone involved me playing ATARI a lot more than talking about feelings. The friend I stayed with, when I stayed there during their wedding week, was packing his suitcase for the honeymoon and she was taking clothes out and throwing them on the floor, and sort of passive-aggressively saying "Come on now sweetie, don't take that" - I couldn't live like that, and this morning they were arguing about whether a shirt was washed. Luckily, at this point, the dog, as if trained, began cutely chewing a hairbrush and diffused any kind of tension - that dog needs it's own sitcom. What I should mention at this point though is that my friend, he kinda sorta maybe had a girlfriend when he was engaged and maybe kinda sorta got busted and now he rots in purgatorial hell for the rest of his life, engaged in arguments about trivialities knowing that the subtext to every argument is still you cheated on me and I took you book so I have the moral high ground - it might be a conversation about the washing, but there's definitely a moral high ground that has been established. I just don't know why you'd want to live like that, spending every single day on edge and communicating through a pet - maybe it's just me, I mean, they look happy away on holiday together, but they put themselves under so much pressure I just worry about the quality of their lives at times. And to be honest, especially with her, I don't think having a visitor sitting on the couch loudly bagging out the state of todays popular music scene helps (although if the dog chews my fingers, maybe that helps?)...

Anyway, they don't know I gave the dog a big boot up the arse for it's cheek, so keep it to yourself. Now, to get back to the subject of sales pressure, there was a kind of sadness to one aspect of Melbourne sales pressure - the hookers are out on the streets at about 10 in the morning. It's the kid of urban nightmare we don't have in Tasmania, big urban developments left to decay and rot, big unfilled shopping centres full of broken down hopes and piles of rubble, with bong shops that sell hardcore heroin and hookers on the corner, large women pulling their underpants out of their skirts as you get the tram into town, or skinny bewildered women being watched by up to five pimps as she stands on the corner. Maybe we do, and I haven't noticed. In fact, the only obvious hooker I ever saw in Hobart was the one handing out leaflets to the soldiers off the boat. I still wish I'd got one of those leaflets. Anyway, the whole thing was incredibly and quite desperately sad and sleazy, at any time, never mind at ten in the morning. However, what was interesting was that at night when we walked back from the pub, after a man, a man who looked suspiciously like Brett Climo, not that it was, but just saying, had rather timidly and somewhat awkwardly picked up a hooker in his 1974 Honda Civic and drove off, the car was tailed by an imposing and dangerous black Lincoln style car, which obviously and clearly was the pimp making sure his prized asset wasn't in any danger. Or maybe he was off to steal Brett Climos wallet. I don't really have any moralising to do about people who pick up hookers, I mean I never have, but it does some awfully sad and heartbreaking when you see it at that basic level with hookers standing outside day care centres with people pushing prams past them. So while I don't pretend to fully understand the motivations of Brett Climo, the whole scene did make me homesick for Kingston, where our major danger isn't pimps and hos, but the price of a big of Werthers Originals at Coles going up and up and up...

Me? I was inside the pub unable to chat someone up I fancied because they were part of a hens party, and it's a fundamental rule you can't crack a hens party, but that's a story for another day...