Monday, October 26, 2009

Untitled

It wasn't meant to be like this of course - of all the ways a long alcohol fuelled night out could end, the last thing you want to be doing is babysitting the birthday boy while he mardily huffs his way through the dying moments of his own party, while you wonder exactly what you spilled on your retro Ghana soccer top to make the white fabric look such a stupid colour and pine for the sanctity of a warm shower. While you wonder exactly where the brunette you were talking to about Aimee Mann - hoping the knowledge of at least 1ne trendy singer song writer would hide that really you were going to see Britney Spears in 2wo weeks time, only to find out she preferred Britney all along - had gone, what cab she had got into. While you wonder if the denizens of the Republic Bar would have been a lot more impressed if you had worn a communist East Germany top. While you wonder exactly why the man in the grey shirt at Central was so horrifically rude to you, as if the patronage of an African Nation on a soccer top had personally offended him, while he didn't know his own staff were behind his back pulling faces at what a loser he was. While you wonder exactly why people get together when it just makes them miserable, why all the txt msgs are sent when you could just send 1ne to say it's all over. While you wonder why the guy throwing up in the dying remains of a puddle has been completely abandoned by all his friends, who are telling a frankly tedious anecdote about the last series of Heroes and how if you freeze a crowd scene at the 24:27 minute mark of episode blah blah and squint you can see someones girlfriend. While you wonder who Sharon was and why exactly the graffiti on the wall you walked past was so mean to her, and to her fondness for what the quality papers would call a sexual act. While you wonder why people bail you up in the corner and tell you nervously what their dogs favourite TV show is - like I would care! So many thoughts, all of them immediately distracting from the fact that you, yes you, have been officially chosen to guide this night through it's concluding stages, to sit with someone and wait for a taxi. I wanted to ask a lot of questions of course as to why exactly I had gone from such a Lambadaesque dance to sitting on the ground being the supportive friend that I always am in the space of about 10en minutes, but maybe it was 2wo hours had passed, maybe a whole day and night. I've lost my ability to judge anything, my night is now in the hands of the poor Indian cab driver who seems to always get me, the 1ne with the loud Bhangra music, and the weary sense of resignation that comes from being the only mean with a work ethic that means you pick up stray would be Ghanaians at 3hree in the morning...

If the cab had come 5ive minutes earlier I would have missed an argument. She was all in black and yelling about how she did all the work, all the housekeeping, she was restrained not just by her dominatrix style belt and girdle combination but by the moral high-ground, the right to wag a finger and quote financial receipts. He didn't care, he was about to fall over, face down and undignified outside a kebab shop. His leg was the giveaway. It was shaking all over like a fuzzy tree, but never in the same direction 2wice. All he has to offer in this drunken state are words that suggest his own girlfriend knows Sharon, or maybe is Sharon, maybe it was her castigated on that wall. She doesn't even flinch or deviate, she just stares right through him and walks off in a direction he can't work out, and there he stands comprehensively defeated, forced to drunkenly harangue strangers for pennies so he can get a kebab or a cab home. A million type of the same argument pass through the streets, but there we all sit, frozen for a moment together, before he falls over in a heap and curses his own legs, his own pair of shoes, the sky and the moon, anything but his own lack of coherence. I don't what he expected when he left the house in the afternoon - I don't know what I expected, I don't know what Sharon expected from her life, but it seems as though it should all have better than this. In a fitful moment of irony, just to blank out the grumpy companion and the rant about how his birthday party was ruined by poor catering, the Beatles In My Life comes on my IPOD - yeah, good 1ne John, places I'll never forget, good on you. Or did it come into my head? Or was it Miami by Will Smith? Who would know...damn licorice shots...confusing my memories. Had I really left a really tender hug for this...

If the cab had been 10en minutes earlier, I would have missed the man on the ground being arrested. I would have missed wondering exactly why the "huckling" - as we call it in my country - of the drunk for lewd conduct and drunken behaviour was left to tiny blonde women, 1ne of whom had the hairstyle of an 80tys lady wrestler, primped and crimped and god knows what else. It was lucky he went quietly, but then there were several impotently furious steroid addicted bouncers looking for someone to hit, frustrated everyone has well behaved. No wait, that's behaved well. I'm slurring my words, I better not say anything lest I get huckled into the back of the van. I've never seen a man dragged from his resting position into the back of a police van be quite so accomodating. He seems to have completely given up on all resistance, on any kind of life. I think for a moment he might be dead, until he lets out a short sharp burst of wind, and then disappears into the night to sleep it off. Up the road, a pixie pale girl with a pink streak in her hair is reaching for a discarded shoe that has fallen off her foot, but like a drunken Sisyphus, she's condemned to never quite co-ordinate her arm in the direction of the heel and loses her grip on the sparkle encrusted item every time she gets near it. It eventually ends up somewhere near The Quarry, or Irish, or some god forsaken pub with limited attraction to the sober. She gives up on the pursuit of the high heel, and folds her arms in frustration, while 2wo rampaging bulls on a footy trip push and shove each other in the middle of the rod, desperately macho but equally hopeful this will do, that they can sort out their aggression with chest bumps and fist shaking rather than anything meaningful. Sums it all up really - a night of bare minimum effort. Should have said this instead of done nothing, should have apologized more meaningfully instead of infusing it with sarcasm, should have demanded that the shop actually go to the trouble of cooking chips instead of just defrosting them for a minute...we all should have tried harder I guess, but we only had 12elve hours to get it all in, and there's nothing we can do about it now...taxis here...not quite on time, even the driver can't be botherd at this time, I mean his Bhangra music is suitably muted for a start...

It's 4our PM by the time I can even type this. I've been in bed all day, covers pulled over my head, sleeping through an argument outside my window that's left a glass bottle smashed all over the ground near Barry Tossers lawn. I hope it wasn't me that did it, although part of me wouldn't mind. Everything is still. My unfinished book about Dillinger is sitting near the fireplace, and I don't remember starting to read it. There's a txt on my phone from the brunette, but I'm too tired to get up and reply. It seems to be a reply to 1ne I've sent - I don't remember sending it. There's a Temper Trap song on Channel V. I don't remember turning Channel V on to be honest. It does remind me to pretend to like them next time I'm out in public though. The Republic Bar might just go to the top of my list of pubs that don't really care about the responsible serving of alcohol policy. Why do I taste licor...oh yeah, right. I can't even get off the floor to go and make toast or some basic single man lives alone staple, I don't even have SpaghettiOs to do the easiest meal in the world. When I finally get up from the floor, I look down the road and see a man in a GreenT-shirt from Greenpeace standing by the side of the road in faint drizzle tapping his foot, and I wonder what he's doing there, standing in splendid isolation near my house, not a soul near him. I can only presume he's waiting for a life given he's holding bundle upon bundle of leaflets and has no 1ne to hand them out to. An old woman is the only person remotely in sight, and when he approaches, she swears at him and pushes her trolley curtly past, leaving him looking a bit sad and grumpy and staring at his Doc Martens. Eventually his lift turns up, and he throws down the leaflets in a fit of pique, and there they sit to this moment, because no 1ne can be botherd to go and pick them up. I would go and do it myself, but there's a DVD I've been meaning to watch for ages now, and I really just can't see myself getting round to it...

I'm not sure what the point of going out is, when the entertainment is so rich just from staying in...and txt msgs really are the new talking to people...

4 comments:

Kath Lockett said...

Miles I need a lie down and a bowl of SpaghettiOs after that...

"or some god forsaken pub with limited attraction to the sober" - are you sure you weren't out in Flemington? We seem to be the suburb of single shoes that are found scattered all over the footpaths.....

Maybe the meaning of your night out is all connected to my word verificiation - sponskie - "Miles had hoped for a sponskie to end his evening, but ended up reading about Sharon on the wall instead."

G. B. Miller said...

So, was a good time had by all?

Or do you wish that day never started/finsihed the way that it did?

Baino said...

Hey Miles. Hope you're OK been a while between posts. I don't get the out all night, wasted weekend thing. .just a money pit and a lost Sunday but . . .horses for courses.

Miles McClagan said...

I've never been to Flemington - that I know of. SpaghettiOs are the joys of single manhood. Them and toast. Single shoes are definitely a wonderful Hobart tradition - they are massively sponskie, they really are. But I hope Sharon is OK...

Um...I wish I didn't have to babysit. I've kind of fallen out with the birthday boy to be honest, not in a bad way. If I could have jumped in a cab at 9 pm, with just the phone number, it would have been great. No good can come at 3am...

I don't have the stomach to do it often much these days. It's fun, but I'm getting to the Chris Rock routine about being the old guy in the club stage of my life, so I better stop...one day!