SCREWING UP A RELATIONSHIP ON A HALLOWEEN EVENING

I was in a cab with Jude, drunk, and as we headed to a Halloween party in Ascot hosted by one of the girls we met at the Barracks he told me about this time when he was sixteen and he and a girl had just broken up right after a night-before-Halloween themed school dance; he was in the kitchen of his three storey home, drinking some of his father’s whiskey (he was drinking for the first time in his life), when he spotted his father’s grand piano in their dining hall in the distance. It was a shiny piano, an unplayed piano. He stumbled over to it and opened the whatever it is that covered the keys and placed his fingers on the keys and started playing anything he could think of. Laughing and swaying, he sang Savage Garden and a little bit of Sisqo and a little bit of Limp Bizkit and for some reason it all made sense, the feel of pressing his fingers down on the white and black cold to make music that people would listen to and admire and adore and appreciate made so much sense. From there he immediately fantasised about becoming the best grand pianist in history. They’d make him play in a giant concert hall in Sydney, they’d make him play in a giant concert hall in New York, they’d make him play in the most prestigious halls in Europe. He’d be eccentric, but a good looking, sexy eccentric, just like the characters Johnny Depp plays as, and because he’d be handsomely eccentric he’d get a lot of blowjobs, he’d get so many blowjobs, he’d get SHITLOADS of blowjobs and forever and ever and ever ever they’d be the best blowjobs in the world: the first one would be from a pretty Asian girl he had a crush on, then he’d get one from a pretty African girl he had a crush on, then a pretty blonde German girl he had a crush on, then a cute but bitchy looking Russian girl he had a crush on – he’d make his own little UN with the women who’d suck him off, and they’d suck him off everywhere he could ever dream of: in an airplane, in a dressing room, by the Alps, besides some quicksand and most importantly, as he’d play on his favourite grand piano. Would they bite? Of course they wouldn’t bite. Would they complain about it? Of course they wouldn’t complain about it. Jude couldn’t sleep just thinking about the piano playing he’d do. He set out a routine inside his head: I’ll wake up at three in the morning and play until I have to leave for school; during lunch, I’ll go to the music room and play and learn from Mrs. Keith, then I’ll rush home and play and play and play; I’ll ignore my mobile phone completely because my whole life will be about about mastering the piano.

Jude woke up at noon the next day and just as he was about to approach his father’s grand piano he was distracted by a text message on his mobile phone: I love you baby, let’s not break up again. I miss you so much and I’ll die without you. Please don’t be angry with me. He drove to her home in the second hand Alfa his father gave him and they made out in her room while her parents were hosting a lunch party downstairs and she cried and he cried, and they kissed, and for the first time, he saw her naked (she had hair on her nipples!). He went to his empty home happy, and as he passed the kitchen he looked at his father’s grand piano. It was disgustingly clean. He sat down in front of it and began playing, but after about five minutes or so he was bored and irritated by the challenge. He went to his room, gave his girlfriend a call, watched some bizarre porn on a CD his friend from school gave him and just as he was about to sleep, he realised that it was Halloween.