Always Eighteen

May 7th 2012 22:06

If you’ve been to Teneriffe before, then you would’ve seen the River and the trees. You would’ve seen the semi-expensive lofts and the semi-expensive restaurants and the bars and the people with the skinny jeans and The London Club, and Salon, and Mizu, and the quiet lack of traffic at night.

We were in a restaurant in Teneriffe and we’d been eating for a while when Candy suddenly looked at me. “You’re so young.”

“I know,” I said. “Jealous?”

She smiled at this. “Honesty: what do you think?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I used to think that honesty was important when it comes to relationships.” She cleared her throat, wiped her mouth with her napkin and continued: “But all it seems to do is hurt people.”

“Again,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

She giggled. “I mean, like, for instance, when I tell a partner that I’m out with another guy, or if I tell a partner that I think he’s gaining weight, or if I tell a partner… I don’t know, something honest, I find that all this honesty seems to do is offend them or turn them away from me.”

“We all hate the truth. But honesty is something that needs to happen.”

“Does it really? I know it has its place, but is it something that always needs to happen?”

“I find that women also hate the truth, yet they complain when they don’t get it. In the end I figured it’s all about delivery. Honesty works if you deliver it well,” I said. “Anyway: New York, the islands of Greece or Ipswich: if you could go to any of these places, where would you go?”

“Ipswich.”

“You’re the most honest person I’ve ever met.”

We finished and headed to Claret House and had a few drinks and we spoke about our past relationships (for some reason she kept wanting to talk about past relationships), and as we had more drinks we befriended some strangers and we befriended the friendly owners. But the only thing I really wanted to do was kiss her.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

We walked through some buildings and found the Brisbane River. It was tremendously quiet. For a few minutes we simply looked at it, at the little dots that reflected from it in the darkness.

“I like this.”

“You like what?”

“Just this quiet.”

We stopped looking at the River and walked further down the walkway; she kept telling me things that I couldn’t be bothered listening to. “I want to kiss you,” I finally said.

“No,” she said. “You can’t.”

“Okay.”

“Not yet, at least.”

I smiled.

We walked to my car, holding hands.

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THE SKINNY GIRL IN THE POOL PARTY

April 29th 2012 14:16

The annoying part about the pool party on Tuesday was that there was no pool. I was tricked. It was a party in some guy’s house in Carseldine and in it were about four hipsters, three bogans, five goths and about thirty well dressed twenty-somethings.

Two people stood out. The first person was this really loud guy who kept slapping women from behind; they all let him do it because he was bald and big and had a tattoo of a dead person on one of his arms. “YOU WATCH THIS,” he kept saying, “I’LL SLAP ‘EM ALL IN THE ARSE BY THE END OF THIS EVENING.”

The second person was this girl who was skinny and tired looking. Her eyes were as large as her eye bags and she wore a faded black jacket on top of a shirt that was so small it exposed her belly button. “Are you in for it?” she kept asking me, her eyes wide and blank. “Are you in for it?”

“The hell do you want?”

She led me to this room with three other skinny girls, all also tired looking. One was being felt up by a guy in a large Tupac shirt. One was shooting up. One was just staring at me and grinning. “Look, kid, it’s reality!” She giggled, covering her mouth gently as she did so.

I quickly got the hell out of there but the skinny girl rushed after me, trying to pull me back in. “I’ll suck you I’ll suck you just let me just give me fucking something - ” All of a sudden, she let out a loud scream. “AHHH!”

I turned around to see the big guy standing behind her, grinning in all of his big perverted glory: he had slapped her arse, hard. She was completely still, eyes wide, colour completely gone.

The big guy then went after me – I tried to run but he grabbed my arm and bent me over and slapped me right in front of a group of people.

He laughed. “I DIDN’T SAY I ONLY SLAPPED BIRDS, DID I?”

I lunged towards him and completely missed. “I hate this place!” I said as I stood up and rushed out of the party.

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HIGH SCHOOL ALL OVER AGAIN

April 25th 2012 05:25

I kept failing with Candy until I decided to actually call her. “She’s into finance and all that, right?” Jude asked me beforehand. “Immediately ask her something about the stock market. Don’t say, ‘Hi, how are you,’ or anything boring like that. Just immediately start talking about Telstra shares or some shit. And when she starts talking about them, just keep saying, ‘I see.’ Then, when you’ve finally gotten her hooked, tell her you know ‘a great place’ and invite her to it.”

I didn’t believe him but I did it anyway.

“Hello?”

“What do you think about Telstra shares?”

“I’d rather buy into OneSteel,” she said. “My friend, I had dinner with him the other day… he’s a director there and apparently the future looks promising for them.”

“I see…”

“How about banks?” She continued. “Have you thought about buying into banks? If you were, and you’re patient enough to hold onto them for a little while, I’d say buy into ANZ. At least when shares are being sold for nineteen.”

“I see…”

From there we somehow began talking about her family, about where she came from, about her handsome dog that was almost her size. I then told her about all the problems in my life and she was somehow entertained by all of them.

A few hours went by and the world hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t spoken to someone on the phone like that in a long time – it was like I was in high school all over again.

“Listen,” I said. “Are you busy this Friday?”

“No, why?”

“Let’s have dinner or something.” I bit my lip, then: “I know a great place.”

“Oh, really? Sounds good!”

I didn’t know a great place. Talking about the stock market, organising restaurant dates – I was placing myself in a different universe. I wasn’t exactly being myself, but I was willing to bend who I was for the sake of attracting even a milligram of her attention. And I guess, for some time, Candy also changed part of herself in order to put up with someone like me.

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CHASING CANDY ON EASTER

April 14th 2012 00:39

At first, nothing worked with Candy. Funny texts didn’t work. Funny Facebook messages didn’t work. She’d be interested for a moment but then stop responding. Maybe she was too smart for me. Maybe I wasn’t that funny.

I’d never chased someone with a PhD before and something about it scared me. The more I thought about her and her accomplishments, the more awkward and tense I became whenever we spoke. One evening, after much dread, I finally decided to ask her to go to some jazz event with me.

“Sorry I’d love to, but I’m lecturing that evening.”

“How about another evening?”

Silence.

I saw her again at an Easter dinner by the Eagle Street Pier. She was sitting with a bunch of girls, laughing about something, probably about how attractive and successful they were. I found a spare spot right next to her and sat down.

“Hi,” I said. I’d been drinking.

“Hi.”

I noticed her camera on the table, picked it up and took a photo of her. I smiled but she didn’t.

She grabbed it back from me. “What are you doing?”

I looked around: everyone was staring straight at us, at me. “Fuck!” I stood up and stumbled away.

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HOW TO WRITE AN AWARD WINNING SHORT STORY

April 3rd 2012 01:37

I’ve written four novels. The first was terrible, the second was terrible, the third was confused, the latest better than average. All have so far been repeatedly rejected.

I’ve had more luck with short stories and at the start of this year, while drinking with Jude, I decided that my next book will be all about them. From what successes I’ve had with short stories in the past, I’d realised that you must: a) Do the opposite of what everyone tells you b) have problems in your life (or discover the problems of others) c) realise that it’s all about relationships d) don’t make it forced and finally, contrary to what everyone says: e) it’s not always important to show your work to people who’ll look at your work objectively – compare Bob Dylan to Enya to N.W.A. and compare Hemingway to Shakespeare to Stephanie Meyer: their work is rejected by some, but loved by millions of others; sometimes you need blind encouragement to pull you through the dark times; only seek help (from professionals) when you want someone to help you improve your spelling.

Anyway, somewhere within March I managed to sit in front of a keyboard and begin writing again. I’d just spent a day in my hot old room, sweating, alone, flicking through photos I’d kept and wondering about what happened to all the other photos I’d thrown away.

I looked at my screen and typed: What made Eva special to begin with was that she looked good.

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WHY WE ARE ALONE

March 25th 2012 11:12

I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent most of my life alone. Even when I’m with other people, there’s some part of me – the important part of me – that’s not there; instead, it’s floating above another universe or burying itself deeper and deeper inside a pile of cigarettes, and it’s thinking of things and places and people and situations that are in some other constellation or some other world, and all of a sudden, someone's waving their hand in front of me and asking me if I’m even listening to what they’re saying and I cross my head and say, shit no!

I wonder who I’d be if I’d never been heartbroken. I wonder what I’d think if I’d never been rejected or fired or pushed or pulled or judged. I wonder what I’d think of myself if I’d never been poor. What would I do if I’d never been scared?

We become alone because of people, the world, who we are; we become alone when we think we’re alone. When I want to write about loneliness I want to write about a drive home or a girl crying on the other end of the phone or some crazy guy humping a wall or some crazy guy selling pencils in West End or some crazy guy with a gun or some crazy guy who can swim a thousand metres but can’t swim five hundred. When I want to write about my loneliness I want to write for help, for rescue, for pity, for a hand to pick me up. When I want to write about my loneliness I want to write about the greatness I’d achieved on my own, that full moon I’d seen on my own, that money I’d made on my own, those shoes I’d destroyed on my own, the bonfire and the floating orange things and the glance at the girl’s legs and the interesting article and the things I mutter to myself and the looks at the mirror and the new hairstyle and the times I picked my nose; sometimes I wish for loneliness and sometimes I wish for loneliness to end for good. I'm different alone than I am with other people; in my alone time, things are safe – but they’re lonely, but I am free. When I want to write about my loneliness I want to write about nothing at all.

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CANDY THE LECTURER. AND THE ONLY OTHER KIDS WHO DIDN’T GO TO THE FUTURE MUSIC FESTIVAL

March 11th 2012 13:03

Six people didn’t end up going to the Future Music Festival. There was me, there was this hipster guy from Up North named Billy, there was his girlfriend, there was Simon, there was Vail, and finally (and most importantly), there was Vail’s friend Candy.

“I don’t get it,” Billy said.

“You don’t get what?”

“Music. Techno. Whatever. All that shit.”

“You’re a hipster,” I said. “You should know everything about music, even if it’s not hipster music. Fill your stereotype, man.”

“I’m not a hipster.”

His girlfriend snickered. “Yes you are. Look at those skinny jeans you just spent all our money on and your fucking well-trimmed beard.”

Billy shrugged, and for a good amount of time, the entire table was quiet.
I glanced at Vail, who was texting someone, then at Candy. “This is easily the worst conversation I’ve ever been in.”

She chuckled, then: “So what do you do, Dean?”

I thought about the one paragraph I’d written for the book I plan to sell online, the fresh set of rejection letters in my inbox, the negative value in my bank account. “Uh, the real question is, what do you do, Candy? And why the hell is your name Candy?”

“I’m a lecturer. And Candy’s not my real name.” She smiled over at Vail. “It’s Vail’s nickname for me.”

“The worst nickname in the world, but I’ll call you it anyway.”

She giggled and slapped my arm. “Shut up.”

It turned out that Candy was an incredibly bright person. She taught (and had a PhD in) Economics; she was in the process of writing her first textbook. She was pale, petite and had a slight, constant scowl on her face. I was immediately attracted to her, and although I didn’t show it, I didn’t want the dinner to end. But the dinner did end.

“How are you getting home?” I asked her.

“Simon’s driving me.” She looked over at Simon, then back at me. “Nice meeting you.”

“You too.”

I watched her walk away with Simon.

“Hey.” Billy put his hand on my shoulder. “We’ll be snorting pills now. What are you guys up to?”

I looked at Vail. “Want some ice cream or something?”

“Sure. South Bank?”

“Sounds good.”

Vail and I walked towards South Bank, looking for ice cream.

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HOW TO BE UNSUCCESSFUL

February 26th 2012 11:11

It was our last day in Melbourne and Jude and I realised that we’d learnt nothing from our brief holiday at all. We were in a twenty-four hour kebab store, attempting to drink our coffee, and it was three in the morning and Jude’s eyes were red and I was browsing through old text messages in my mobile phone. Jude looked sad. “We never saw the penguins.”

“We never saw anything.”

Jude looked intently into his coffee, spinning it all around in circles with one of his fingers. After some time, he looked back up at me as if suddenly realising I was still there. “What are you going to do? When we get back?”

“Write.”

“But you keep failing at writing. You’re shit at marketing your work and you’re shit at getting the attention of publishers and you’re shit at working hard. You’ve got no cash, man. I can’t keep paying for your food.”

He was right. “You know, I’ve got this Always Eighteen blog thing. I’m thinking of writing an eBook book of short stories… for like, my readers and fans and stuff.”

Jude wasn’t convinced. “Get a fucking job.”

I looked at him. “I told you, I can’t stand working for people. Anyway, what are you going to do? What the hell happened to all those businesses of yours?”

Jude shrugged and mumbled something. “I don’t know, man. I worked hard every day and all these responsibilities just got to me. And the money I made was like, so much less than the allowance I used to get. I’m going to ask my dad for a job. Get stable.”

“Doesn’t sound like you. I thought you wanted to be successful.”

“That can wait.” Jude checked his watch. “Are you happy, Dean? Like, emotionally?”

“Nope. Are you?”

“Fuck no.”

“Whenever in misery, think about the starving Africans.”

We both sort of laughed, but not really. “You know,” I said, “when I was a kid, my dad had so much faith in me and my grades that he kept saying that my first car would be a BMW.”

Jude grinned. “My first car was a BMW.”

“That’s because it got given to you.”

“You can’t be successful with your writing,” Jude said. “Not just because it’s hard to be a financially successful writer, but because your writing… it’s all about failure. It’s about how you fail, it’s about how you friends fail and it’s always about how you end up with nothing. It’s like, entertaining stuff, but you need to always destroy your path in order to write about it. Isn’t that stupid? To get good material, you need to live a life of tragedy? Dude, I swear, if you keep writing the type of shit you do, you’re going to end up blasting you face off like Hemingway did. And you’d be nowhere near as famous… or like, as good.”

I gave Jude the finger. “Have you even read a book before?”

“Of course I have.”

I smirked. “Twilight?”

“What wrong with Twilight? It’s a good series. A really good series. It’s all about love, man, and love is great.”

I ignored the hell out of him. I took a sip from my cup of coffee, scowled, then put it back down. “It’s our last day in Melbourne and it’s the beginning of another year. I don’t know, maybe I’ll look for a full time job or something,” I shrugged. Was Jude right about my writing? How can a dream about becoming a successful writer be a dream if it’s a dream filled with poverty, with tragedy? Some of the greatest artists, some of my own idols, became who they were not because they were happy, but because they were damaged. I looked at Jude, sitting there, spinning his coffee with his finger, and instantly changed my mind. “Actually, no, I’m going to keep writing.”

“Whatever. Anyway, we need to get ourselves checked. I don’t ever want a mushroom to grow out of my penis.”

“You’re absolutely right.”

Outside the kebab store, a drunk girl, maybe fourteen, screamed, “Dazza! Dazza! Are we catching a cab?” No one replied. She glanced inside and spotted Jude and smiled and waved at him before walking away.

hemingway - sourced from abovetheaether.com

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WHAT HAPPENED TO VALENTINE'S DAY?

February 19th 2012 12:44

We first decided that we knew what love is when we were both around eight years old and we were on our own bikes and you yelled, “Do you love me?” and I said, “Fuck yes!” and you giggled and you said, “Don’t say the eff word, I hate it when you say the eff word,” and I said, “But I love you – you have to accept me for everything that I am,” and you smiled and said OK and we kept riding, and when we got home I proposed to you and you said yes, and we got married in front of your cat.

We decided that we knew what love is when we were teenagers and we watched Jerry Maguire at home when nobody was around and there was a scene where Tom Cruise was humping a woman against a bookshelf. “Should we try this?” you asked and I said, “You had me at hello,” and you held my hand and told me that you wanted a cute little kid like the kid in the movie and I said, “You can have anything you want,” and deep inside I secretly hoped he looked nothing like me.

We both found out what love is when you found someone else. You told me that he’s cute and that he has a car and doesn’t get angry like I do and that now you know what a real boyfriend is like. You no longer called me back or told me that you missed me like you used to and I couldn’t sleep and I bought you flowers and told you, “I love you! I love you!” and you screamed, “Now you tell me! Now you tell me! You never told me, you never bought me flowers, not once!” and I threatened to punch the shit out of you and you said, “Go on, hit me, go on, hit me, go on, I hate you! Hit me!” and I didn’t remind you about the time when we were eight years old.

We both found out what love is when we became responsible for money: we had to focus on our studies and we then had to focus on our jobs and we then had to focus on our income. I confessed to my girlfriend that I’d cheated on her, and her shoulders relaxed and she confessed that she’d cheated on me too, but even so we still hooked up once in a while when we were lonely and drunk or felt insecure; this kept happening until she thought that she was pregnant and didn’t know who the father was and she became a lesbian and I sort of didn’t hear from her again. That didn’t matter, because by then all my friends and I wanted to do was to find the right girls to get into threesomes with. Sometimes I’d call you and tell you about my day and about the girls in my life and sometimes you’d call me and tell me your day and about the boys in your life and from how you’d describe your sex life with them I’d think: I’m so glad I never ended up with you.

We both found out what love is when romance didn’t become the centre of our lives. I focused on getting promoted and learning the guitar on the internet and you focused on travelling all over the world and meeting interesting new people and learning new languages. One day I saw a video on the news of a woman being stoned to death and something about it struck me and I donated all of my savings, for some reason, to a cancer fund. Then there was a death and I was fired from my job and began drinking with what little money I had left and spent weeks reading books in my room. You called and told me that you were engaged, and I got out of my rut and began applying for jobs overseas.

We both found out what love is when you started a family and I walked up to a girl in a cocktail party and asked her how she knew Leah. The girl and I talked for about ten minutes and I got her business card and the next day, after watching some porn (twice), I emailed her and we kept emailing until we finally met up for dinner and at the end of the night she smiled coyly and asked, “Is this a date?” and we kissed exactly like how we kissed the countless dates we’d had in the past. I knew everything by then: what CDs to play in the background, how to unclasp a bra from behind or from the front, how to casually ask the girl if she was STD free and had proof of a recent blood test, what kind of smell she’d have, what kind of goofy things you can do in bed to make her giggle, how she’d look the morning after, how I would look the morning after. You called me and told me how much you loved your son and your husband and, tears in my eyes, I told you I was happy for the both of us: you were married to a wonderful man and I was married to a template.

We both found out what love is when I bumped into you somewhere very Hollywood and very cliché: a café bookshop. You’d certainly aged and gained some weight but you made me laugh and I missed you nonetheless. You told me endless stories about your husband and your son and your dog and I didn’t know what to say, so I talked about my career, some people at work, about how I go to the gym three times a week. You put your hand on mine and said, “You’ll find her, you will,” and, looking straight at you, I told you, “Are you fucking blind?” and you giggled and said, “Don’t say the eff word, I hate it when you say the eff word,” and I asked you if you still liked to ride bikes in parks.

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TRIED AND TESTED REMEDIES FOR HEARTBREAK... THAT DON'T WORK

February 12th 2012 11:36

I’ve been the cause and victim of heartbreak too many times in my life, and the worst lesson I’ve learnt from it all is that I can’t help but make history repeat itself. Here are three tried and tested remedies my friends and I have repeatedly used to cure heartbreak… that don’t actually work:

1. Drink excessive amounts of alcohol. Writers (including myself) love to romanticise the consumption of alcohol. That is, until we die lonely, fat and full of self pity. Then, our publishers will do the romanticising for us.

2. Sleep with lots of women. It’s a lot more difficult than it is in the movies, especially when you’re drunk and no one else is. And then there’s the herpes.

3. Be the jealous tough guy. Sending jealous or abusive messages after the break up, throwing things like cocaine or ice cubes at them in clubs or simply doing something tragic that once would’ve made them concerned about you – it doesn’t work. All of that just makes them either hate or pity you more and more.

I wrote these tips in someone’s notebook after a regretful day in Melbourne. Jude and I decided to sign up for a wine tour in Yarra Valley, and at our first stop I spotted a pretty-faced, shortish-looking girl who smiled a lot.

“Do the trick I trick I told you,” Jude said.

“No.”

He punched my shoulder. “Just do it.”

I walked up to her. “I’m going to guess what you do.” I closed my eyes and waved a finger around her face, like how a magician would do it. I opened my eyes again and said, “You’re an accountant.”

She giggled, slapping my arm. “No, silly. I’m a student. I’m studying law. Now why would you think I’m an accountant?”

She was half Hungarian half something else I don’t remember, and for a while, we had a decent conversation. But the wine kept arriving, and by midnight, after having had to leave the wine tour early via taxi, and after having had to calm Jude down for crying hysterically (he kept wailing, “I can’t! I can’t!”), and after we ended up at McDonald’s, then at Sonia’s eating McDonald’s, then at Southbank vomiting the McDonald’s, we found ourselves very unclear of things. I checked my mobile phone and found no messages from the receptionist, so I texted her this: I wish we’d never met.

“What’s your name?” the law student asked me.

I looked up from my phone. “Dean. What’s yours?”

“Something,” she slurred. She grabbed my phone from me and stuffed it in her purse and told me to never look at it again. She took my hand and we caught a taxi to her hotel in the city and found her room. It was a room much more expensive than mine.

“Your room looks much more expensive than mine,” I said.

She sat down on the edge of her large bed. “I’m insecure.”

I sat down next to her. “About what?”

“About this birthmark.” She lifted her top slightly to show me a birthmark, right underneath her right breast.

“It’s furry. Does it tickle?”

She rolled her eyes. “You know what’s interesting about the world? Relationships and insecurities. We do all these things, these crazy, time consuming things to cure the things that like, hurt us inside, and to cure our need to be closer with people, even though these like, crazy, time consuming things make our insecurities and loneliness even worse.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “You’re like, completely wrong. Everyone has everything under control.”

“Do you have porn?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

She put her hand on my lap and looked at me intently. “I like Kid Cudi. Do you like Kid Cudi?”

“He’s okay. He’s alright.”

She smiled, stood up, walked to the light switch and dimmed it. She walked back to me, covered my ears gently with her hands and kissed my forehead, and then my nose. Her breath smelt terrible. She let go of my ears and leant right close to one of them; she nibbled it before whispering: “Did… you bring… did you bring, protection?”

“No.” And we kissed.

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