Jack Riewoldt, The Monster and The Bird

Its 3hree AM in some middling Melbourne wine bar near Southbank. Friends of friends have dispersed long ago, in couples both new and old, in taxis and cars and off into the night. One of them looked incredibly like Nikki Webster, it distracted me for hours. Circumstance has ensured I'm here in Melbourne unaccompanied and my hotel room will only contain a left over slice of pizza, but it's all good for now. I'm left with the stragglers and my deeply unsympathetic friend Louise. Louise is a cold hearted pragmatist locked in a deep competitive race with no-one in particular to acquire more trinkets than anyone else. Across from us, an Italian waitress cleans a glass several times over, hoping we will leave soon so she can close up. The security guard hops awkwardly from foot to foot in desperate boredom, and 2wo of our other friends are awkwardly trying to pash, paired together by default and middle age ennui. I'm struck by how tired Louise looks - I wonder what happens to party girls as they age, when it's awkwardly painful to get in a cab at 8am and keep up with the younger girls. The last time I saw Louise before tonight she was throwing shapes in the middle of a dance floor with 16teen year olds. I do admire her self confidence in many ways. She plainly can't dance, but she doesn't care, while every step or shape I throw is laborious and pained. I inherited my lack of dancing ability from my Dad. I've turned down two or three dances already tonight, due to a lack of confidence. I'm neither drunk nor sober, and simply babbling to kill the silence. The Italian waitress walks past, and over laughs at 1ne of my jokes, perhaps for a tip, perhaps to indicate that she's watching us impatiently. Time is moving slowly - words aren't having any impact...neither are badly spelled text messages it seems...

There's a man in a black shirt with ashen grey lips drunkenly jabbing at an ATM in the corner. His hair is matted into a comb over, and he can't stand up straight, one leg going to the shops while the other comes back with the change. He misses the buttons as he swipes wildly with his fingers and he turns to the security guard and demands something is done to fix "his" ATM. His eyes are utterly void of logic and flash with malice as he tries to attract attention to his financial plight. The security is dis-interested, amusing himself watching our friends try and pash as the female of the pairing stumbles and falls to the floor giggling like a school girl. The man walks over to the security guard and spits in his direction, maybe accidentally, but in a flash of mindless violence so vivid and bright to me it was like a sparkler arcing through the sky, he is on the ground holding his face, struck violently hard and left to contemplate his failings in attitude and hairstyle. The security guard is indifferent save for a self satisfied flex of his left pec, and drags the man outside. Everyone seems to freeze awkwardly in time - even the pashing stumbling couple seem to lose interest each other and begin to hypnotically stare at the small drop of blood polluting their dance floor. The waitress gestures to someone in the back and some distractingly loud dance music sounds off through crackly PA speakers to try and distract us from the mayhem. It doesn't work and soon everyone is desperate to leave, mentally stampeding to more pleasant pastures as soon as they can...

So Louise and I make small talk as she surreptitiously pours her drink into mine, hoping I don't notice so it looks like she's drinking fast, trying to maintain a hard partying image even when she can't be bothered. Her first response to the BJ issue was crudely phrased - as you can imagine, when you are trying to explain complicated feelings to someone under the influence of Heineken and simplistic values, the last thing you want to hear is your entire relationship may come down to a question of carnal knowledge. You do want to believe it's special, you really do, and not driven by baser instincts. Louise is bored; I can see it in her eyes. She can probably tell I'm bored because I realise I've been looking at her crooked lipstick for hours on end without thinking properly about a word I've said. I could argue for hours with her about the nature of feelings, but it's easier to have a conversation about how to steal the audio off a YouTube clip and put it on your IPOD or some other ephemeral conversational topic. Our wounded comb overed victim bangs on the window in feeble middle class impotent rage, before turning and leaving. The pashing couple depart in separate cabs having had an argument about football, and the Italian waitress begins flicking the lights. Part of me wants to stay just to see how desperate they get to make us leave. Maybe someone will come out of the back with a broom and start sweeping or maybe they'll begin trying to make us all uncomfortable by talking loudly about us. Used to work at certain Grade 12 parties...

We leave once the conversation dies and fades. Louise hugs me as she gets into her taxi, a chunky 80s style bangle shimmering in the street light. I take a bite of a kebab I don't really remember buying. I wish I felt more special, and wasn't weighed down by self conscious values - my Dad told me when my Grade Two girlfriend dumped me for liking a different colour of crayon I was naive to think I was someone special. A heavy burden to weigh upon the burgeoning consciousness of a kid, one who was still working out just why he preferred Grimlock to Optimus Prime. Louise said she saw the footballer Jack Riewoldt sitting miserable in a bar at Crown Casino, almost in tears because he had been stood up. I think her point was that everyone was the same and love was no big deal and we can all have a broken heart. Louise can tie anything into celebrities. When I hurt my leg I think it was the same bone as Katy Perry's from memory. Last time I saw Jack Riewoldt he was cracking onto a barmaid at a Newtown pub with some don't you know who I am style patter. I think he'll do better than me throughout this New Year somehow. I haven't seen Louise since although several of her recent Facebook posts have been angst ridden and abusive towards her ex boyfriend, suggesting her world weary people hating everything is shit and blunt patter is rehearsed and untrue. The kebab remained stoically silent throughout our interaction, and I thought the night was over....

And then you flip your phone, push it up, hear a bland corporate clang indicating you've received a text message, read it, and that's it...life changed...even the kebab and cold slice of pizza seems delicious...and you really think everything’s changed. And that moment, you wouldn't trade your life for Jack Riewoldts for all the goals in the world...

Enjoy calm beauty with a unique sense of soul

Its Xmas day in a suburban Tasmanian town. In the middle distance 2wo surfers sit on the beach in awe of the beautiful scenery and of course their own fancy haircuts. As for me and my family, after we piled into the family Kia Rio and listened to one of my more "Weary Willie" CDs (c Mum who thinks I only listen to whingy whiny indie females) and after a drive that consists of no fewer than 2wo arguments about cheese, we're guests in other people’s lives for the day. We have gathered around an increasingly cramped gently decorated wooden table to eat turkey and to exchange whimsical variations of an answer to life’s eternal question - "how's work going?".

Should I go with "It's still going!" or "Yeah OK? How about you?" - decisions decisions...bad jokes, hats, small talk from the pits of hell, it's all the staples of course. Yet something is missing, and I can feel the chill. This is the first Xmas with these people I can remember where it's been as much of an obligation for them to put on the spread as it is for me to faux enjoy it. Strange. I don't tell BJ, for I have built myself up to her at this point as a nihilist hell bent on hating on society, but later with genuine interest I do ask someone how work is going, just to get the party started. Perish the thought...

There's an aching poignancy in 1ne of the symbolically empty chairs on the deck above me later in the day which is making this protagonist decidedly uneasy.

"You can't sit in that chair!" they will say to anyone who doesn't know, only half jokingly. "Grandad wouldn't have wanted you to sit in that chair!" - I never knew either of my Granddads. One was a taciturn old religiously hypocritically religious bore who fell out with my Dad over a christening shawl, and never spoke to him again. He wrote me out of his wives obit in the local paper and claimed just 1ne Grandchild spawned the earth. My other Grandad was a product of his times alcoholic whose own funeral failed to inspire the most base of human sadness. It's thus hard for me to conjure up the feelings 1ne must feel towards a kindly old Grandfather figure. I did know their Grandad though, and upon realising that what their Grandad mostly wanted wasn't to be symbolically and posthumously represented by a worn old out folding chair, but to be left the fuck alone, I begin to think about my life and it's accelerating decline into mediocrity in a way alien to most of my other Xmas's. Certainly more than the 1ne I pulled a Santa hat over my head and fell asleep for 4our hours...

I would muse more on this decline if people would stop asking me how work was going...

Death frightens me. The reduction of a series of complexities in an individual’s life - in particular what really fascinates me, the individual steps in someone’s life that gets them to be, well, them - to basically a series of 4our or 5ive anecdotes that mostly end with the phrase "that was our (name inserted)" terrifies me. I wonder in this back garden how I will be remembered, if at all, as a furry yellow tennis ball slips past my feet and into the dear departed’s once mighty patch of vegetables. It's certainly a little D&M for a backyard game of cricket these thoughts - it's no surprise the kids are able to sneak through for a cheeky 2nd run. Inevitably, some1ne says can you imagine Granddads reaction if some1ne - me - stepped on his carrots. They share a mutual laugh I can appreciate but never fully understand. While they are musing, I run out one of the kids with a desperate throw from the pumpkin patch, which seems slightly inappropriate, but properly Australian...

Even the present opening is rapid-fire and awkward and forced. My Mum insists on buying the "kids" 1ne of those little stockings full of chocolate. Those kids are now 16, and as likely to buy Ice as enjoy the delicious chocolately treat of a Crunchie. Mind you, my own chocolate treats go the other way now - fancy, sure, and it's the thought that counts, but they seem, well, really old man chocolates. I'm only a hop and a step away from a bag of Werther Originals. Some1ne starts telling me a story about their car that seems so inordinately boring time seems to stop. I suck on 1ne of my old man chocolates and nod in all the right places but really I'm thinking if I could hit my Dad on the head with 1ne of the chocolates and if it would hurt. I mean these are big chocolates. The crux of the story about the car from what I gather seems to be that this guy’s favourite car magazine has said his car is a potential death trap. Some1ne takes our photo on a mobile phone. I'm not sure that it will be a keeper. My eyes when I look at the photo are blank while his are animated. What amuses me is my Mum in the background is stuck in a similar conversation. Later I find out hers is about Avenue Q. At least I could contribute to that discussion...what is a manifold anyway?

My own legacy is troubling me. I feel in a fog that won't stop swirling around me, like I've woke up Quantum Leap style in some1ne else’s life, at 32 years of age, without a clue how I got here. Kids I see 1nce a year are on mobile phones and talking about getting drugs at a gay club. When did Hobart get a gay club? Am I still hip? I know who Katy B is, does that count for anything? I say VHS instead of DVD, an instant giveaway. My expression seems permanently troubled, dour, tired even. At the same time, I'm lucky - I'm safe, and whenever I want, I can up and go to any part of the world I feel like. It's truly troubling to have a mid life crisis in the middle of Xmas dinner. In fact, it's only in the mid of this troubling series of questions that I realise that a small child has sat at the Xmas dinner table for about 2wo minutes with a fixed intensity stare that has bored into my skull, while they hold out a cracker. Every1ne at the table seems to be competing for my attention and is willing me to, bluntly, pull the bloody thing just to get on with the day. That's part of the problem as well. I'm not thinking about pulling a cracker, I'm only thinking of her. Whether this is going to work out, whether it's going to change my life. How to explain to a child with no teeth and a pout that could stop a truck that this moment where you hold out a cracker and nothing else matters is as good as life is ever going to get...

I won though, got a party hat and a little monocle out of a cracker. It's still on my kitchen table. Small victories to build on...

The beginning of the one way conversation Part One

It's 12 pm in a suburban Tasmanian shopping centre. I have left behind the woes of office life and a flashing orange Instant message that may or may not be important to step into the bewilderness. 1ne of the local businesses has an angry sign about centre management affixed to his window, and all I notice about it is the shoddy way it's taped to the window, as if his impotently angry hands couldn't wait to put the message up, shabby or otherwise. I peer in the window and he's handing over a pen to a customer to sign his petition. Something about air conditioning. His cheeks are puce and crimson in alternate angry streaks. The customer drops the magic word to describe just what he thinks of centre management. All together now, it's the most wonderful time of the year...

Its 3hree days before Xmas and the centre is frothing with activity. I've acquired a neck injury, a sign of rapid aging. It went off like a shotgun my neck, right in the middle of the day. On a green bench sit 2wo middle class university students in matching school leaver’s tops. One of them is talking rapidly and preciously about whether the protagonist in a particular novel is "fascinating or trite". The girl in the conversation is staring ahead blankly, as if she's heard the conversation a million times before or maybe as if she can turn the next table into ashes simply by staring a hole through it. I'm walking with a purpose I notice. I'm very self conscious today. Every gesture is for some reason bothering me, as if I've become an awkwardly strung puppet in a giant play I didn't sign up for. What is with my walk? When did I start walking like this...

Xmas is not my favourite time of year. I've already regaled most of our casual workers with what has almost become a Seinfeldesque rehearsed piece of conversational fluff about how tedious Xmas dinner has become when people ask me every year how work is. To be honest, it's so rehearsed, it's almost ready for the stage, and I even pause for laughter round the photocopier. Truthfully, if that's not a sign of middle class ennui...

Xmas, so says a gaudy neon pink sign stuck with Blu Tac to 1ne of the store windows, is for the children. Sadly for me, my Dad has taped over 1ne of my Xmas mornings as a child with an old repeated episode of the Vicar Of Dibley. Tragically for me, the last vestiges of any evidence I may have been a free spirited innocent cherub have been erased and replaced by the formulaic scripted comedy of Richard Curtis and someone liners from the bloke who played Trigger on Only Fools and Horses. Those years now only exist in anecdote and whimsy, exaggeration and memories that coated in sentiment. My Dad has chosen to mostly remember the anecdotes that end with me looking foolish. That is his right as a parent. I have to peer through the veneer of Scottish cynicism to find true sentiment and affection. My own Xmas card in my hands will soon possess, in my own handwriting, a heartfelt and jocular plea to tell me who my real parents are, part of a long running family joke about me being a long last member of the Packer clan. My Mum usually ripostes with some remark about how they'd have sent my back by now. Yes, I was born this way, so any VHS based evidence of a sickly sweet family gathered around the Xmas tree learning would clearly have been staged nonsense for Grandma, and best taped over by a Trigger joke, since it would bear no relation at all to my memories, and how they have come to form the person standing drinking Red Bull before this storebound Santa at this particular hour...

"Do you believe in magic!" yells an emaciated sickly looking woman in skin tight green elf pants. She pumps her fist in the air like a bewildered out of place rock star as a single faint trace of mascara rolls down her cheek, and holds out her megaphone to her audience of bored looking children and . The rain on a tin roof emulating small round of applause that reverberates around the shopping centre suggests our shoppers not only don't believe in magic, they don't even believe in it enough to drown out the faint hum of a corporate CD chain store's Mariah Carey CD. She doesn't care - her enthusiasm for Xmas isn't shared by the sleepy looking store Santa who woozily huffs and forces his red jowls into a forced smile as a small child with cherubic features affixes himself to Santa's knee to aim for the only things important in a child’s life. I envy his simplistic view that life can any only get better if he acquires a particular item or possession. And yet, not only 5ive minutes later is the cherubic angelic child fizzing in strange anger about not getting a Samboys chip, but I'm forced to ponder just how emotionally mature I am when there's only one thing in my life that makes any sense, even when my thoughts are being Careyed at a suddenly noxious level...

I return to work. I'm humming a public domain carol. There's a crazy man standing on the steps of the centre. He's hitting himself in the head and talking about knocking his haircut into shape. His carer - not as I sometimes say, his "handler" - is patiently waiting for this fixation to stop. I feel no connection to my fellow man at all these days. Everywhere I look, I feel tired. I've stopped making sense in my conversation, and no one is making sense in return to me. Truly, I feel as though everything around me is a crazed one way conversation. If I speak to someone, I feel as though my words are meaningless, bouncing off and falling to the floor in a slow agonizing motion that I can see. In return, people talking to me are mere disturbances, interruptions into a private obsession that can never be truly explained. The crazy man is quiet now, but smiling the demented smile of those about to stab. My simplistic life begins again when I re-enter my work place, spin another one of my tedious anecdotes, receive in return a mild response of fake laughter, smooth my suit down and receive on Instant Messenger a comment from the only person in my life that makes any sense to me, truly the ship through the fog, if that ship was Tasmanian and the fog was a series of small children running into my shins and making me feel every bit of my world weary age...

Her name was BJ, and she was going to save me from all this...