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

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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