1. DEATH ROW

I have given considerable thought to what I would order for my last meal if I were on death row. I am torn between the idea of something I know and love, and something new and exotic. In short, would I order chicken schnitzel, chips and gravy, or would I order tartar of Kobe beef with imperial beluga caviar and belons oyster? In such a high pressure situation I feel certain I could never make the right decision. Whatever I decided I would really regret it. My very last thought before the state legally murdered me would be, “Fuck, could I have ordered the fancy dish as an entree?”

I can think of no better anecdote to sum me up as a person. I agonise endlessly over making a decision and then I regret it for the rest of my (brief) life. Indecision, regret, stupidity and chicken schnitzel are my closest companions.


2. McFUCK

After a big night on the drink, a few friends and I made our way back to Dandy’s apartment via McDonalds. We sat around Dandy’s lounge room eating our filthy imperialist muck when, out of the blue, Bumpkin dropped his pants, inserted his penis into a Big Mac and started fucking it.

He is from the country but, still, it was a strange and unexpected development to say the least. I can’t be sure if he was fucking it with an erect penis, because I was trying not to look, but I am pretty sure he didn’t reach the point where he added his own special sauce to the burger. After he got a few laughs from the boys he tossed the bashed up looking burger on the coffee table, did up his pants and sat back on the lounge.

Then another friend, Dandy, put forward an idea.

“I will give T-Bone ten bucks if he eats it.”

“I would throw in money to see that,” a few other friends chimed in.

I think I have told you before that, during my period of long term unemployment, friends subsidised my drinking by paying me to perform stupid dares. If I haven’t, they did, and this was one of them. By the time everyone had reached in to their wallets there was over fifty dollars on the table. Beside it lay a mangled hamburger that had been sexual violated by my friend.


3. THE MANHOOD TEST

I have manhood issues. Most men do. They just express them in different ways. I have never wanted a big fast car, I have never wanted to punch other blokes, I have never wanted to spend all day in the gym, I have never wanted to be a captain of industry, I have never wanted to tell people how great I am at sport or how much smarter I am than everyone else. The only area in life that I absolutely need to prove my manhood is in my insistence on eating the hottest curry available. Every single time.

I have come unstuck many, many times as a result of being so manly. Obviously, Indian restaurants are a great place to put a man to the test. I have had more than a few vindaloos that would have killed lesser men. I had a beef vindaloo in Canberra that was so hot it burnt my arse on the way out the next day. I kid you not, each brown nugget felt like a giant bell chilly being squeezed out of my fiery ring hole.


4. GREAT FOOD DATES

Every Friday night I go on a date with my friend Lenny. While his partner goes to work we go to various establishments around town and try out the food. We tend to go to pub bistros for our intimate meals because my friend Lenny is not as cultured as me, plus he thinks it is “gay” to take me to a fancy restaurant. From this wealth of experience I have developed a few favourite places to dine, with Lenny. My point here is not to suggest places for you to eat in the local area; I just needed to create another story to help me get to ten.


5. HEAVEN AND HELL

I love a good schnitzel. For a schnitzel to rate highly it has to be chicken, I can’t abide any pork or veal corruptions. It must have crispy skin and a tender, juicy breast. But above all, it needs to be really fucking big. I have never enjoyed a small schnitzel. The food purists will recoil in horror and insist food can’t be judged on the size of the serve. They are wrong; size is everything. That size is not important is something I insist girlfriends repeat over and over, but it simply isn’t true.

At present my favourite is the schnitzel and salad wrap from the junction food court. Half way through one of these monsters your jaw will be begging you to stop. The wrap embraces a fine array of salads, including beetroot, which I would never have thought to combine with schnitzel, but I am tremendously grateful that someone else did.

I have only ever seen one schnitzel bigger - at Turner corner shop, which also does gorgeous potato scallops that give me terrible wind. Their schnitzel burger is so big that it is really three meals. Like everything in Canberra, it is overpriced, so I only treated myself to one when I was suffering from a terrible hangover. Luckily, that was just about every weekend. I would wake up sick as a dog and the only thing that would make me feel better would be the prospect of a ginormous schnitzel burger with liberal helpings of mayo and sweet chilli sauce.

One time after returning home with my truck load of schnitzel goodness I was overcome with a bout of seasickness. I raced to the bathroom to vomit up the remainder of last night’s rum. After a few minutes in the lavvy I returned to the kitchen with additional space in my belly for schnitzel. And there on the kitchen bench was the most horrific sight I have ever seen. The cat was up there chomping away at my slice of heaven.

“Nnnnoooooooooooo,” I screamed and raced toward the crime scene.

The cat fled and I was left to look at my expensive, half masticated, expensive, life-saving, expensive, sustenance. I was devastated. The schnitzel was ruined. I hate waste at the best of times. The beautiful aroma was filling the house. I decided to just have a nibble at the end the cat had not touched. I sat down to eat it. My girlfriend, who had witnessed everything, sat down to watch me. With every bite I took I could see her looking at me with the desperate hope that I would stop.

And with every bite I took I knew I was moving closer to an irreconcilable end. By the time I finished the whole thing, cat chewed bits and all, I knew my girlfriend could not love me anymore, and I knew I could never love the cat anymore, and I knew I would love chicken schnitzel under any circumstances.


6. A DELICATE LOVE QUESTION

I am in love with the woman who works behind the deli counter at my local supermarket. I have never seen a woman slice meat more erotically than this woman does. I think she might fancy me. She is always really friendly when she serves me. She always smiles and says, “Hello, what can I get for you?” And I always respond, “Hehehehe”, like a schoolgirl, and then I order some sliced ham. And after she expertly gathers and wraps my ham she says, “Have a nice day”. And I say, “Hehehehe” and run away.

I wonder if she notices that I always get the discounted ham, or, if there is none on special, does she notice that I get fifty grams less. And if she does notice, I wonder if this makes me look more or less attractive to her. She probably doesn’t know it, but I am on a very fixed pension. Apart from buying some more expensive meats I can think of no way to seduce her. Can you?


7. KING OF THE JUNGLE CURRY

My favourite place to dine is the Benno in Hammo. They serve an exciting range of oriental dishes that includes the hottest curry known to man. It is called Pad Khi Mow. If my knowledge of the Asian language is as good as I think it is, this translates as, 'stir fry for intoxicated person'. It is an explosive mix of jungle herbs and lots of chilli with chicken or beef.

Lenny begs me not to order it, “C’mon T-Bone, the pad prik is delicious. You love prik – just order it for a change.” What Lenny is not quite intelligent enough to grasp is that the decision is not mine. I, like Lenny, am a victim of my own masculinity. It is the manly combination of too much testosterone and alcohol that forces me to tackle the Pad Khi Mow.

Before I even take a bite my eyes start to water. I take a good whiff and singe the hair in my nostrils. I begin to eat and tears roll freely and snot floods out my scorched nostrils. Lenny can’t look at me; I have put him off his food and ruined his night again. Before I can tell him about my curry shits, he asks me, “Why T-bone? Why do you have to do this every time?”

With tear stained cheeks, I sniffle and whisper, “Because I am a man”.


8. FOOD EROTICA

Have you ever bought some chocolate body paint to spice up your relationship? Only for your relationship to go sour before you have the courage to introduce it to the bedroom? And have you then become concerned that the chocolate body paint use-by-date is looming fast with no romantic opportunities anywhere in sight? And did you then decide to pour it onto your arm and lick it off because you’re a tight-arse? And when you finished licking it all up did you masturbate? And have you ever written a blog about how you licked chocolate body paint off your arm and then masturbated? I have.


9. THE DISTASTE FOR WASTE

My dad has the worst diet in the world. Partly because he shares the gene that denies him the capacity to ever let food go to waste and partly because he has dementia. After every meal he scrapes his leftovers into a bowl that contains the leftovers from previous meals. He then mixes it and mashes it with a fork. The food in the bowl no longer resembles the curry, pizza, pasta, etc that it was once; it just looks like a bowl of brown liquid poo.

Then every day for breakfast and lunch he will pour some out of the bowl on to some toast, cover it in barbeque and tomato sauce, put it in the microwave, heat it up, forget about it for an hour or two, remember, heat it up again and eat it. Whatever he can’t finish goes back into the bowl again. And the process is repeated at lunch time. The smell in the house after he has heated one of these ‘meals’ is indescribably foul. It takes at least an hour to clear it.

As disgusting as this is, I know it is one of the many things that I will miss when he is gone.


10. THE CONFESSION

I ate the hamburger.

Forgive me for not having written to you in quite some time. I have been feeling a little melancholy. The time around Anzac day has become a difficult time for me.

For the ignorant, Anzac day is the day Australians commemorate their war dead. Anzac day, 25th April, is the anniversary of the Allied invasion of Gallipoli during World War One. To most observers it was a brief and pointless side show amidst a horrific conflagration. To Australians it has become the defining event of a newly founded nation. A story of courage, mateship and sacrifice for the nation was plucked from the brutal reality of the failed invasion of Turkey. Consequently, the symbols of war litter our society, quite literally in the form of war monuments. Australia has more of these per head of population than any country on earth. I hate them. The older ones explicitly mention the defence of the (British) Empire or the Australian “Imperial” Army and, regardless of age, none reflect the terrifying death and devastation of war. Never is the statute of a corpse, an amputee, a shell shocked soldier, a grieving mother or widow or a child who will never know their father.

While the Anzac legend has long saddened me, the source of my deep distress about this event has a more recent origin. Along with war memorials, Australia has pubs run by, and supposedly for the benefit of, all returned servicemen and their families. In recent years my father earned a little spare cash by maintaining the grounds surrounding one of these clubs. After he was diagnosed with dementia I started helping him with this odd job.

The job was made even odder because Dad had always brought along his mental ward, Jimmy. I admire Jimmy because he does not give a fuck – about anything. Not one fuck. In a world where just about everybody is constantly acting out some role because they are too afraid or insecure to be themselves, Jimmy is a breath of uncaring freshness. Although anyone who has breathed the air around Jimmy would hardly describe it as fresh. His level of uncaring extends to never showering. He has also been wearing the same clothes since late last year – beanie, jumper (no shirt underneath) tucked into shorts that are pulled up somewhere around his ears and a pair of ugg boots.

But more than his complete lack of concern for personal hygiene and appearance, I admire Jimmy’s coarse language. I probably know people who swear as much as Jimmy, but I have never met anyone who does so with such passion and conviction. What makes it funnier is that Jimmy is partially deaf so he swears very loudly. To those who don’t know him he appears aggressive, but he is not at all.

Dad is also quite partial to the occasional outburst of profanity. He usually directs his tirades at passing motorists, insects and radio announcers. He is fond of yelling something like, “fuck shit cunt fucker fuck dickhead,” at a passing car, and then, even more disturbingly, laughing in a maniacal manner.

Mostly, Dad is happy to wander around and talk to people. When he can’t find anyone to talk to he engages in other dementia-related behaviour. One day, while carrying out our gardening duty, I found him facing a brick wall, his face only centimetres from it, standing perfectly still. I thought he had lost it completely. I tentatively asked him if he was okay.

“Look at them,” he said, “where do you think they are going in such a hurry?”

As I got closer I saw that he was studying the ants racing around the brickwork.

“I dunno to the shops probably,” I answered jokingly.
“Which shops – Cardiff or Wallsend?” he asked in all seriousness.
“I dunno.”
“They probably don’t even know themselves. The bloody idiots,” he added before laughing contemptuously at the ant world.

He loves ants, especially killing them and counting up the corpses. He loved killing the ants around the club. There are only so many ants to kill at home (actually, there have been 423 to kill so far this week – he keeps a written tally of his kill count). At the club he could wander around the car park wiping out millions of innocent ants, who will never have a monument dedicated to their sacrifice. This massacre was Dad’s only contribution to our gardening efforts.

While Dad and Jimmy were colourful characters to work with, they were not the most productive of workplace comrades. Jimmy, to his credit, worked tirelessly the whole time. Unfortunately he never achieved very much for all his labour. He would mow slowly and carefully forward a metre and then backward a metre and then forward over the same patch and on he went backward and forward over the same patch endlessly. I may be exaggerating slightly, but I think he only managed to cut about three blades of grass an hour.

So pretty much all of the work was done by me. And the longer this went on for the more I resented it. I love my Dad and I admire Jimmy, but love and admiration could only sustain our little gardening enterprise for so long. Perhaps if it was more exciting work it would not have affected me so much, but I am not a fan of cutting grass. In fact, I don’t think there is a more tedious, shitty task in the world. After all, no matter how well you do, it just grows back. The more I grew to resent it the longer I would leave it before returning to do it.

But there was no avoiding it in the lead up to Anzac day. All the rituals and ceremonies, including the wreath laying at the ubiquitous monument, take place on the club grounds. So a few days before Anzac day last year, I loaded up the car with equipment and my helpers and we went off to war, for what turned out to be the last time.

I was just so fed up with it. Because I had been leaving it so long it was really overgrown and a lot of work was required. I could count on Jimmy to do a couple of square metres, but I was going to have to do the rest. Is this what I had come back from Europe for? To cut grass? To battle weeds? Never mind war veterans, what about my sacrifice? It was while I was consumed with these resentful thoughts that I first noticed a truck pull up with gardening equipment and a bunch of mongs in the cabin. I wondered if they had come, quite literally, to cut our grass.

I did not dwell on this, I was too busy dwelling in self pity and trying to get the fucking whipper snipper to start. You know, I never realised what a funny name whipper snipper is until I got to England and heard people using the term weed whacker. I wonder what other interesting names exist in the world for the humble lawn edger. I could think of a few that day, straight from Dad and Jimmy’s vocabulary. So embittered was I that I became angry at the edger because I could not start it.

I went over to Dad in desperation to ask him if he could remember how to start it. There are few things sadder in life than pleading with someone who has dementia to try to remember something they cannot. He barely acknowledged me. He just kept stamping on the ants while saying, “cunt, fuck, die, shit” and laughing hysterically. I even wandered past Jimmy and the tiny patch of grass he continued to mow over. I asked him if he knew how to start it. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU SAY?”, the partially deaf Jimmy yelled over the mower. And then I lost it completely.

I turned away from Jimmy and marched away toward the war monument depicting a buff soldier standing to attention. I gripped the edger tight and I charged at the monument. I smashed the edger against it hard, again and again before I collapsed in a heap. As suddenly as the violent rage had come upon me, it left me. I sat on the ground beneath the monument and I wept uncontrollably. It was not the first or last time I had come apart at the seams, but it was the most public and violent episode. Looking back, I can only imagine outraged war veterans sitting inside the club watching out the window, having survived war only to die of a T-Bone induced heart attack. But like Jimmy, I no longer gave a fuck about anything.

A man, who must have witnessed the whole ugly scene, got out of the driver’s side of the mong gardening truck. Through the tears I saw him approach Dad and say something. Dad was too engrossed in the ant world to acknowledge him. I then saw the man approach Jimmy. I could not hear what he said to Jimmy, but I did hear Jimmy reply, “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU SAY?” The man quickly moved away from Jimmy and approached me with some trepidation.

“Excuse me son,” he said, “I was wondering if you could tell me where your supervisor is.”

I lifted my large head to look up at him blankly through the tears and snot.

“What?” I said bewilderedly.

“Your supervisor – the man who looks after you boys,” he tried again. “You see, my crew has now been given the contract to maintain this lawn. So I need to talk to your supervisor, maybe he can get you boys another job through the Department of Disability Services.”

I was too emotionally fucked up to respond. It barely even registered that the weed war was finally over.

So now when Anzac day comes around and young Australians rush off to Turkey to see the sights of Australian history and proclaim how the Anzacs died for us, I think of a completely different war. I think of a war on ignorance. And I think about what it really means to be courageous. And I think about sacrifice. And I think about Dad and Jimmy. And I think about lawn maintenance and how much I hate it. And, of course, I think about that guy who mistook me for a mong.

Perhaps the best thing about the United States, and I do hope I am not being juvenile here, is that they call bum-bags, fanny-packs. That’s right, fanny-packs. Undoubtedly the next best thing about the United States is the city of San Francisco.

The thing I like most about San Fran is that it rarely feels like you are in a city, it is more like a collection of diverse neighbourhoods. And it is all neatly packed into a seven mile peninsula. You can wander through North Beach, pick up some poetry at City Lights Bookstore and relax with it in an Italian coffee shop. Then stroll through Chinatown, and rattle off all the Jack Nicolson quotes you can recall. Before heading down to Fisherman’s Wharf for some clam chowder imaginatively served in a bread-boat and be frightened by the world famous bushman. Power-walk up through Golden Gate Park and forget that you are even in a city. Keep on walking up through Haight and moan that it is not like it was in the sixties while sharing a doobie with an aging hippie and then cough uncontrollably because you are not much of pot smoker and then become paranoid by the presence of homeless youth with painted faces and skateboards. Rock on over to Sunset and chill out in the two coolest pubs in the world – the Fireside, where everyone loves me and the Shamrock, which, incredibly, has both free popcorn and backgammon tables. Once the liberating affects of alcohol kick in head on over to the Castro where nobody will judge you (harshly) for wearing tight cut-offs and drop in to Castro cinema, the most beautiful in the world, and watch Milk while sharing a diet coke and some comfort with a strange man. Don’t forget to take in the beautiful Victorian homes and their great paint jobs as you stroll, and especially don’t forget to make a pilgrimage to the Full House house where you can yell and yell for Uncle Joey until irate residents threaten to call the police. Finish up in the Fillmore at a late night jazz club where you will be guaranteed to be the least rhythmic person in the joint. Then find a nice, all-American girl and snuggle up in her bed, while she sleeps on the couch.

While San Francisco is a great place, it is not perfect. Like the rest of the United States it is plagued by the scourge of chain stores. I am a life-long supporter of the ma and pa store (or in San Fran maybe that should be the pa and pa store). I don’t know how anyone can see chain stores as anything other than a blight. Yet even here California provides one notable exception. In and Out Burger provides a magical dining experience thanks to the uncomplicated menu (cheeseburger or hamburger with chips), the quality of the food (burgers that taste like burgers and not plastic and chips made out of actual potatoes before your very eyes), and a level of friendly service from the dedicated and clean-cut staff that remind one of wholesome 1950s America.

I never thought I could love a place as much as I love Germany. But I really think San Francisco is the place for me. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Germany, especially her women and sausages, but I am no longer in love with Germany. Germany and I are still good friends. But my heart belongs to San Francisco. I have found the place that inspires me. It even inspired me to go shopping.

I loathe shopping, but man cannot live by hoodies alone. Clothing is so cheap in America that I thought I would put myself through it this one time and I could buy enough stuff to last me eight years. So I made my way out of the city to a place called Gilford. Gilford is not so much a community as it is an entire suburb of factory outlet stores. I had never seen so many shops in one place.

At one of the chain stores I vehemently oppose I picked out a number of items to try on my oddly shaped (but attractive, at least, to American women, well, at least to one American woman) body. One of the many reasons I hate clothes shopping is my fitting-room phobia. Shops in general make me nervous, and fitting-rooms bring me to the point of breakdown. My concerns mostly revolve around the lack of uniform policy across stores about how many items can be taken into the change room, whether permission, a key or checking tag are required before entering and, of course, fear of walking in on someone or being walked in on myself. This is especially risky when they only have the cheap-arsed curtains over the doorway.

This particular store at Guilford had nice, secure looking change room doors. I stalked around the fitting room perimeter trying to figure out the store procedure for a while. Then when I saw a person vacating a cubicle I boldly scurried past them and in to the safety of the empty fitting-room cubicle. I tried on slacks and shoes and was trying to decide if they matched my Berkeley hoodie. The mirror in the room was too small to judge. I went back out into the corridor to check myself out in the much bigger mirror. I thought I looked pretty cool.

I returned to my cubicle only to find the door locked. Had some fucker snuck into my cubicle? There was a half metre gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. I bent down to peer under the door, while also trying to appear as little like a pervert as possible. There was no one in the cubicle. The door must have locked itself. I could have gone and asked a store employee for a key. Instead I decided to slide under the door to retrieve my own clothes.

I tentatively slide my large head under the door. It was a tight fit. Even more than fitting rooms I fear getting my head stuck somewhere again. Just as I was wriggling my shoulders under the door I heard a voice say, “Just what do you think you are doing sir?” I lay still for a moment and wondered if the voice was talking to me. “Please come back out from under there sir,” the voice said. I assumed the voice had to be talking to me. I began to wriggle back out.

I was greeted by a woman in a serious looking uniform with an equally serious look on her face. She looked at me as I stood, then she knocked on the fitting room door.

“Are you okay in there madam,” she asked in the loud voice of authority.
“Yes thank you,” a woman’s voice responded.
“Okay, I am going to have to ask you to leave the store please sir,” the voice of authority said to me.
“What?” I said in dismay, “that voice came from at least two change rooms away.”
“Let’s go sir,” she said in a tired voice, like she heard this from perverts all the time.
“But my clothes are in there,” I protested.
“Sir you have been acting suspiciously since you came into the store. Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way. I don’t think you want to get the police involved.”

I thought she was the police. She must have been store security. It is really hard to tell in America, everyone has a uniform and, I suspect, a gun. Which is why I meekly allowed her to escort me from the store in a pair of stolen slacks and shoes.

This was not my first brush with authority since landing in this country. In fact, I lied to get into the country. Not because I had to, just because I am frightened of authority. Let me explain. When I got to the immigration desk at the airport I was asked by a very serious gentleman why I had come here. I answered him, “I have just come for a visit.” I thought this sounded suspicious so I nervously elaborated, “I have come to visit my friend Dale”. It was a stupid detail to add, as if the immigration guy would know Dale.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that sir,” said immigration.

Shit, I thought, maybe he does know Dale, and what’s more he must know what a prick Dale is since he is being sympathetic. Then he asked me, “Where will you be staying?”

“With my friend,” I answered.
“The friend that died?” he asked confusedly.

Shit, I realised that when I said Dale he thought I said died. A normal person would have corrected this, but I am far from normal. I started panicking that if I appeared to change my story now that I would seem suspicious and he would not let me into the country. It was the uniform and the serious demeanour; it was making me nervous and irrational.

“Yes,” I lied, “I am staying with my dead friend’s family. I just hope that I can be of some use to them in what is a difficult time for all concerned.”
“Okay sir, here is your visa, have a safe journey.”
“And you have a safe journey through life – treasure it,” I couldn’t stop talking shit.

Then I went to find my dead friend Dale in the Arrivals lounge.

Back in Guilford I also went looking for my friend Dale/Died in the car park. I explained to him how I had been kicked out of the department store in a pair of stolen slacks and shoes. He looked me up and down and asked me why I would steal such hideous clothes. (I told you he is a prick.) I asked him, as someone fluent in American, if he could take the stolen clothes back into the store and negotiate the return of my own clothes.

While he did that I sat in his car in my hoodie, undies and socks and contemplated the situation. Up until this moment I had loved every inch of California, but it is not without its faults. For a nation born on the principles of individualism and freedom there sure is a lot of uniformity and authority. The ridiculous number of people in uniforms and the chain stores, like the one I had just been ejected from, represent some kind of Orwellian nightmare that is destroying the beautiful ideals on which this nation was founded. Stop me if I am using too many big words for you. I do have a Stanford hoodie, don’t you know?

In the past when I have travelled I have always had a girlfriend in tow, or rather, a girlfriend out in front dragging me along. Interesting then, that for my first adventure as a single man I chose to visit the gay capital of the world, San Francisco. It wasn’t the thought of man to man sex that drew me to San Francisco, initially. Gay sex is just one of the many interesting experiences on offer to travellers in the Bay Area.

A major reason to visit is research. Or, more specifically, research grant money. There is an incredible array of quality higher education institutions surrounding the Bay Area, which any researcher with an interest in plundering grant money must visit. That is what drew me here, to be with my people - the smart people – not the gay people. Although I am sure gay people can be smart too, provided they spend more time in the library and less time in the YMCA.

I made my first excursion to UCSF, although not as prestigious as some neighbouring universities, I still gained something from my trip. Specifically, I gained a predominantly blue hoodie with yellow stitching from the campus gift store. I feel so smart in it. Next up I made the pilgrimage to the University of California, Berkeley. Ahhh, Berkeley, the spiritual home of student protest. And what better way for me to expand my dissenting mind than to purchase a discounted Berkeley hoodie. I look so rebellious in it. Then it was on to Stanford, a must for all serious scholars. Stanford surpasses even Berkeley for the vast array of resources available in its gift store. I felt compelled to purchase two hoodies there. Did you know the Bay area is home to more Noble prize winners than any other region on earth? I bet you didn’t know that, because you don’t have a Stanford hoodie.

Once you have acquired all the knowledge available at campus gift stores, there is still much to do in the Bay Area. Such as crossing bridges. My first trip was over the famed Golden Gate Bridge. It was a transporting experience, but in no way was it golden. I preferred my trip over the Bay Bridge. It is the poorer cousin to Golden Gate Bridge but I have to say, I found it pretty moving. It made me wonder if the Bay Bridge had a sexier name, would tourists flock to photograph it? Can a bland name condemn an exciting bridge to a mundane, functional existence?

And what of the San Mateo Bridge (technically know as the Hayward Bridge – snooze)? It is the longest in the Bay Area and the twenty-fifth longest in the world, yet it barely raises an eyelid outside the Noble Prize, hoodie wearing crowd. And don’t even get me started on Bixby Bridge, completed in 1932, and still one of the ten highest single span bridges in the world.

All this talk of achievements of world standing brings me neatly around to redwood trees. These trees are the oldest and tallest in the world. You almost need a packed lunch for the walk around the base of one of these monsters. And they can be found within a half hour drive from the city. The age and size of these trees lends an ancient and enchanting aspect to these wonders of nature. My hike through Muir Woods was the best of my life.
I do realise how dreary I am being with all this talk of universities, bridges, trees and hikes. But I can’t help it; maybe I am just getting old. Maybe this is what happens when you gain professional employment and an impressive array of hoodies. Would I seem less old and boring if I told you that I would root a redwood? I am not a tree hugger by nature, let alone a tree humper, but if I could have sex with a tree it would be a redwood.

I cannot say for certain, but I think part of my desire to sleep with a redwood tree is due to the fact that many of the older trees have semi hollowed-out bases that closely resemble vaginas. Some even have a clitoris type knobby bit at the top of the opening. These vagina openings are big enough to walk inside without even ducking. I would love to have gotten a photo of myself hanging out in a giant tree vag, but unfortunately I exhausted my camera battery taking pictures of my nostril hair in the hotel room the night before.

As it turns out, trees are not the only things with vaginas in San Francisco. While I was exploring the city’s night life I came across women. They are not like women I have encountered elsewhere. They are confident enough to hold a conversation without alcohol, altering the courtship process dramatically. In Australia, everyone sticks close to their (same sex) circle of friends until they are drunk enough to hit someone up for a root and if the other person is also drunk enough, bad, drunken sex ensues. In Britain, kids go to junior high and pregnancy flows inevitably.

But in San Francisco it is different. Women actually wanted to talk to me. Americans, despite their reputation for ignorance, are actually very curious about other people. I talked to more women in one American pub in one night than I have spoken to in all the pubs I’ve been to in all my life elsewhere. And didn’t they love my accent. In Australia I am a below average looking slapper, but in the U.S. I am a below average looking slapper with an accent. In Australia I can tell a woman I am thirty, I live in my Dad’s basement and I am on the pension and they would say, “loser”. In America I can tell a woman I am thirty, I live in my Dad’s basement and I am on the pension and they would say, “oh my god, you Aussies are sooo funny”. I am not certain if it was my accent, or my impressive array of college hoodies, or that I was the only heterosexual guy in town, but god I was so hot.

One woman in particular took a shine to me. Her name was Belle. I called her my little taco. Did you know you can get a taco for a dollar here? I would have paid a dollar for Belle. She did not seem too flattered when I told her that. Not even after I explained to her how much a U.S. dollar is worth in Australian money. This aside Belle really dug me – she laughed at everything I said and I loved her for it.

The hour of night for leaving came and I boldly asked Belle if I could escort her home. She asked me what kind of a girl I thought she was. I answered the type of girl who would not turn a weary traveller away. It was the smoothest I have ever been. It was also the drunkest I have ever been. She seemed hardly even tipsy, and yet she still agreed to take me home. I think she just genuinely liked me – amazing isn’t it?

Modesty and a sense that I am already testing your perseverance with this story prevent me from going into too much detail about what happened at her place. Suffice to say that things progressed pretty quickly. Before long I was climbing into her bed. I told her I had not done this in a while. Be gentle with me, my little one dollar taco, I begged her. She giggled and began removing my jeans. I passed out.

I woke up in the morning hungover and terribly disappointed in myself. Belle was nowhere to be seen. I searched desperately around for signs that she had taken advantage of me after I’d passed out. There were no telltale signs of stickiness or crustification. Goddamn, I thought. Before I could get too down on myself I sensed something other than sex. It was the distinct smell of vomit. Don’t tell me I chundered in the poor woman’s bed? I couldn’t see it anywhere, but I could definitely smell it.

I snuck out of the bedroom and saw her sleeping on the couch. I must have thrown up, I reasoned, if she would not even sleep in her own bed. But, surely I would remember vomiting? Maybe she did it and then moved to the couch? Maybe she was not even asleep, maybe she was so embarrassed by what she had done that she was pretending to sleep until I left? At least, this is what I told myself to justify sneaking out of her apartment like the cowardly, drunken, sleepy, vomiting disgrace that I am.

I don’t want this to be another tale of exotic erotic escapades of the type where I climb into the beds of foreign women, and they go and sleep on the couch. So I will stop here, regain my composure, and finish describing the joys of San Fran another day.

Have you ever had one of those days? I had one of those days today.

I was walking down the corridor to my office this morning when I saw the massage therapist. There is a guy my work employs once a week to give staff mini-massages. I experimented with him one time. But I never had the courage to do it again. I felt bad that I never called him back. I hoped he didn’t feel rejected; the problem wasn’t him, it was me. So when I saw the massage therapist knocking at the office door next to mine, I tried to be friendly to let him know he was still valued.

I said to him in my affable manner, "if she isn't there you can come in here and give me a massage". He looked around at me and I instantly realised that it was not the massage therapist. It was someone I had never seen before. Maybe it was my colleague’s husband? Maybe it was a vulnerable undergraduate student? Whoever it was - it was an entirely inappropriate thing to say to anyone other than a massage therapist. I quickly ducked inside my room without waiting for a response.

I should have turned around and gone home then. And I probably would have but I had someone from I.T. coming to teach me how to upload information onto to the intraweb for our staff profiles. The majority of staff had figured out how to do this for themselves – the instructions are easy to follow, apparently. But to a luddite like me it was incomprehensible, so some poor sap was going to have to give up a part of their day to walk me through it.

The person arrived from I.T. She was a heavily pregnant Indian woman with a beautiful smile, named Girvinda. She got straight down to work while I hovered. Girvinda asked me what aspect of it I needed help with. I told her all of it. She told me that it was really quite simple. At least, that is what I think she said; her accent did make it sound kind of like she had said I was really quite simple.

She began to explain to me how to properly upload the information on to the staff profile. She tried to demonstrate by bringing up her own page. She started to enter her name, Girvinda, into the search bar and what helpful, remembered search popped up?

Girl on girl.

Why on earth did I ever search for that on the office computer? I am angry at myself for even having an interest in this field. I wish I wasn’t so susceptible to it. It is such a cliché. I am such a cliché. I swear it was only the one time. I know you probably don’t believe me but it is the truth. I swear.

I doubt Girvinda believed me either when I mumbled, “Yes... hmmm... gender studies... real growth field... lots of work... gender and sexuality... yes, indeed”. To be honest, I don’t even know if she noticed. If she had, she did not let on. She just kept crapping on about other types of information that staff could upload onto the intrawebby thingo.

I wasn’t really listening; I had my head bowed in shameful silence. Only when she said, “we can also upload links, for example if we take something from your bookmarks and copy it.” I looked up in horror as she went straight to my bookmark folder called ‘research’. She did not realise that ‘research’ was my clever code word to hide all my dirty internet habits. She discovered this when she hovered her cursor over the following link.

http://www.rent-a-dildo.com/notice.htm

“Oh dear,” said Girvinda.
“Oh dear,” said I.
“I don’t think I should be looking at that,” she said.
“No,” I agreed.

I had to try and offer an explanation. But I did not have one. I was just curious. I have never actually rented a dildo. I have only ever been to that site once and I bookmarked it purely because it seemed amusing. I know you probably don’t believe me but it is the truth. I swear.

I doubted Girvinda believed me either, she just moved straight on to the next thing while I kept mumbling.

“The sociology of sex... hmmm... sexual deviance... fascinating field... well, you must understand... you’re pregnant after all... must have done it sometime... and you’re Indian... big population lots of copulation... and the whole Karma Sutra thing... I do get awfully lonely sometimes... are you going to report me?”

She just kept on ignoring me and focusing all her energy on the computer in front of her. She asked me, with some trepidation, if I wanted any images I had stored on the hard-drive uploaded.

“God no!” I practically shouted.

It made me sound like I had a hard-drive full of porn, which is not actually the case. The truth is I have about one-hundred images stored and ninety-nine of them are above board. It was the one image that was not so family friendly that made me shout “god no”. It is a picture of a double ended dildo being fully utilised by two women with the caption below exclaiming, “Rent me!”. I swear it is the only dodgy image I have saved and it was mostly for the caption. I know you probably don’t believe me but it is the truth. I swear.

With that, Girvinda made motions to leave and I thanked her for all she had taught me. She did not thank me for all I had taught her.

I spent much of the rest of the day with my head on the desk in a deep state of depression. I guess there is no one incident that turns a man into a middle aged pervert. Yet I could not help wondering about the past and whether, if things had panned out differently, would I still have ended up here, with my head on the desk. Probably.

By late afternoon I had recovered about as much of my self esteem as I was going to so I got ready to leave. I first peeked out the door to check the massage therapist look-a-like was not hovering around in the corridor. He wasn’t, but I did spy an attractive young woman pinning something to the notice board. She sensed me and turned around. I was conscious that it must have looked like I was spying on her through the crack in the door way. I tried to quickly dispel her of this mistaken notion by bumbling out of the door and trying to be affable, not for the first time today.

“Hello,” I said affably, once out in the corridor.
“Hi,” she said in a sweet sing song voice.

She noticed me reading her notice, which was advertising her babysitting services.

“Do you need a sitter?” she inquired with a beautiful laugh.
“I don’t have kids sorry,” I said.

I should have left it at that.

“But I could still do with a babysitter,” I added.

Not for sex! God don’t think that is what I meant, I prayed. Please just take it like I meant it – a joke about me not being able to look after myself.

She looked at me quizzically. I started to shift uncomfortably.

“I would probably have to charge double to look after an adult,” she said jokingly.

I sighed a huge sigh of relief.

Then said, “You would have to do something special for the extra money.”

Jesus! I really hoped she did not take that the wrong way. I did not mean she would have to do something special as in share a double ended dildo with me for the extra money. I meant something special as in Mary Poppins special, you know, like sing songs and fly around and shit, or Mrs Doubtfire special, with all the rich comic potential of a cross dressing housekeeper.

Instead I just sounded like a sleazy bastard. There must be a disconnect between my brain and my mouth. This sort of thing only happens when I try to be affable.

She looked at me uncomfortably. It was clear she did not know how to respond. In the end she just laughed nervously and said nothing. I took my cue and mumbled “good luck with the job hunt” and took off.

I walked all the way home dejectedly staring at my feet. I would not, could not, make eye contact with any passersby. Every voice I heard I imagined it saying, “there he is,” “that’s the guy who asked me for a massage,” “there’s the creep with all the lewd images on his work computer,” “that’s the sleaze who offered our babysitter double to fuck him.”

There is only one way to recover from a catastrophe such as this one. To go home, put some Radiohead on, curl up in bed with some ice-cream with chocolate topping and ice-magic, and never ever go to work again. Well I guess there is an upside, even to catastrophe.

After proving myself in Glasgow we set off for Edinburgh to catch some of the Fringe Festival. I was not that excited by the prospect, the rough and tumble of Glasgow was more my scene. Edinburgh, especially during Fringe, is a little bit arty, a tad pretentious and ridiculously touristy. We had made plans to stay with another of my girlfriend's friends - this time someone she was still close to. "This friend is important to me," she cautioned me, "so don't embarrass me by being a twat."

Like I would ever do such a thing. When we arrived at her friend’s place I was very impressed by the Georgian style apartment. I was less impressed by the houseguest already ensconced in the apartment. He was - get this - a cousin of a friend. He did not even know the person he was staying with! Freeloading fucker. Worse still, he was an Australian freeloader. And worst of all, he was a freeloading Australian aspiring actor. In Australia we call such people wankers.

Like all actors, I think he was gay, although he did bring a lot of cute women home. Of an evening I would sit in the kitchen and stare intently at him and the hot, aspiring actresses he brought back to shag. Once they had retreated uncomfortably into the bedroom I would sit and think about how many chicks I would pull if I was a gay actor.

When I wasn't making people uncomfortable, I was enjoying the best of the free Fringe. And the best of the free Fringe is pretty poor. It consists mostly of comedians who are not funny enough to charge people to see them. After each and every show I would explain to anyone who would listen how I could make a fortune as a shit comedian on the free Fringe if I had the balls to do stand-up comedy.

When our time in Edinburgh was just about up, my girlfriend suggested we do something nice for her friend as a thank you for putting us up. I knew just the thing.

"No way,” she immediately rejected my suggestion, “I am not taking my friend to see a bunch of guys play with their dicks".

"Honey,” I patiently explained, “Puppetry of the Penis is more than just guys playing with their dicks - it's professional performers using their bodily equipment to make artistic installations that resemble material objects. It's entertaining - it's arty - it's funny - and it's guys playing with their dicks."

I could not convince her. But as luck would have it, all the tickets for shows she wanted to see were sold out. I won the argument. I even dipped into my own meagre holiday funds to pay for the tickets. They weren't cheap. I found it hard to believe that they could charge people so much just to watch them play with their dicks. I play with mine all the time and I would not charge anyone a single penny for the privilege of watching. I guess that is why I was unemployed - I was just too principled.

The gay freeloading wannabe actor who shagged all the women decided he would come along. I knew he would be keen to see some cock. I was too, but not for the same reasons. I was in it for the art.

Although I have to admit that I was disappointed with the show. For a full hour these guys bent and twisted their cocks and balls into different positions then, while holding it all in place would announce something like, "Look! It's the Eiffel Tower ladies and gentlemen." No it’s not, I wanted to scream, it still just looks like a cock and balls.

The long, silent cab ride from the venue gave me time to reflect on the appropriateness of taking someone to watch guys plays with their dicks as a way of saying thank you. Maybe it was not the best idea I had ever had. To make amends I ordered the cabbie to stop around the corner from the apartment at a bar I had passed often in the last few days.

It looked like a nice joint, every time I had walked passed I thought about going in. It was brightly painted and had a huge rainbow flag out the front. Who doesn't like Hawaiian themed places? The others were not so keen to go in, but I insisted. An Irish coffee and a friendly chat would be the perfect end to our shared time together.

And I have to say, it was the best Irish coffee I have ever tasted. I don't know what they put in it, but it was delicious, but it wasn’t cheap. The others seemed to be enjoying their coffee, although they were not particularly talkative. I tried to generate some conversation.

“I thought that was really great when that guy got his cock...”
"Hush", my girlfriend interrupted, "stop yelling about guys playing with their dicks in a gay bar."
"This is a gay bar?" I asked in surprise.
"Of course it is," my girlfriend whispered, "and a seedy one at that. Look around - there are only single guys and they’re all checking each other out."

Come to think of it, I had noticed that. And I had noticed that a few had been looking at me.

“I wonder how much sex has gone on in this place,” I said.

I got no response.

"Oh well," I said, "it's still a great coffee, if a little expensive."
"Jesus," my girlfriend said, "would you stop going on about the price of everything."
"ARE YOU CALLING ME A TIGHT-ARSE?" I hollered.

I was getting even more looks from the guys now.

"I've got to go," said the gay actor, "I am meeting a girl in ten minutes. Thanks for a ... different evening."

Yeah right, he was just frightened of his true sexuality being exposed in this establishment. I didn't say that of course, secretly I was glad he left, he was cramping my style. Now I was the only one being ‘cruised’ – if that is the right word. Gay guys are great – they have no standards - if I was a gay guy I would get so much sex.

But these guys must have known I wasn’t gay because, even though I gave a lot of sultry looks and took an unnecessarily long time in the bathroom, I left the pub completely unmolested. I left Scotland shortly after. And Scotland left me - an even more desperate and depraved person.

The long drive to our next port of call, Isle of Skye, gave my girlfriend the brief opportunity to tell me about her relaxing and peaceful boat ride. It also afforded me a much longer opportunity to explain to her how, if I could afford a boat, I could make a fortune on Loch Ness. I used the second hour of the journey to further demonstrate my economic acumen by suggesting that we sleep the night in the car.

"After all," I explained, "we spent all this money on the car..."
"I spent all this money on the car," she interrupted.
"And all we use it for is to drive places," I continued. "Imagine how much more value we could get out of it if we started sleeping in it. Then maybe we could start taking some meals in it as well."
"Another ridiculous idea," she said.

I could tell from her voice that she was impressed.

"However," she continued, "we might arrive in Skye a bit late to find accommodation. And I am sick of paying for you."

I knew I could convince her.

Once in Skye we found a nice car park by the water to stay the night. Not long after we parked another car arrived and parked beside us. The car park was virtually empty so there was no reason to park so close. A balding middle aged man sat in the car. I looked over and he nodded to me. I waved like a stupid tourist. My girlfriend did not like the look of him so we started the car and drove to a space on the other side of the car park. He started his car and drove into the space next to us.

"Oh Jesus," said my girlfriend, "he must think we’re dogging."
"Huh?" asked poor, naive T-Bone, "What in hell is dogging?"
"Some work mates in London told me about it,” she explained, "apparently there is this thing in Britain where people meet for sex in semi-public places while others watch or join in."

Dogging! Why the fuck didn’t I know about this? There is all this sex going on in the world and nobody ever tells me about it. Dogging! It's all true you know. If you don't believe me look it up on Wikipedia - I did - soon as we got back from Scotland. People are out there shagging in cars and cinemas and gondolas and nobody is doing it with me or even telling me about it.

My girlfriend was more concerned with what we were going to do about the seedy old dude in the car next to us.

"Maybe we should give him a show?" I suggested.
"No. Let’s cover all the windows and go to sleep," she said.

It was probably for the best - I did not want to disappoint two people. So we covered all the windows with clothes and towels and reclined our seats for an affordable nights sleep.

Yet sleep did not come easily to me. Partly, because trying to sleep in a car is really uncomfortable, but also because I could not stop thinking about dogging and all matters sexual. Someone at some time would have done it in this rental car, for sure. People would have done it all over Skye. Some people in Skye were probably at it right then. I reckon if you counted up the number of people having sex in the world at any one time the figure would probably be in the millions.

I was not going to get to sleep with those sorts of terrifying thoughts running through my head. I thought about whacking one out just to put the mind at ease. But wanking in a car while my girlfriend slept in the seat beside me seemed somehow inappropriate. I decided I wasn't, yet, the kind of guy to wank in semi-public places. I wonder if there is a dogging like term for this type of behaviour. In Australia we call people who engage in such activity, sickos.

I slept lightly for a short while until discomfort and the cold woke me. Even in the middle of summer Scotland does not know warmth. I also felt a strong need to wee building in me. I was angry at myself for not having considered this earlier. The sole reason I did not want to camp in Scotland was because of the grief that outdoor urination caused me in Ireland. The problem was worse in a car. I couldn't get out and find a bush in a car park, or even a dark corner because of the street lamps. Plus, let us not forget, there may still have been a balding, middle aged man lurking around, waiting for me to flop my cock out.

I searched the car for something to wee in. I found a half empty bottle. I drank away the contents, which I could not figure from the taste. I hoped my girlfriend had not had the same idea as me earlier in the night. I took out my willy to wee. My girlfriend lifted her head and said sleepily, "Don't you dare masturbate in this car." I protested by telling her how I had decided not to wank hours ago.

"I'm not going to whack off in the car," I reassured her, "I am just going to piss in it."
"Sicko," she said before pulling her sleeping bag up.

I wished I had brought a sleeping bag. It was freezing. I decided to turn the car heater on - just until the car warmed up enough for me to sleep.

I woke the next morning feeling nice and toasty warm. I also woke to the news that the car would not start because someone had left the heater on all night. My girlfriend had to call a real man to come and make the car work again. While he did whatever mechanics do we trekked around beautiful Skye. I saw a lot of great places to have sex in.

We returned to the car a few hours later and the man charged my girlfriend a great sum of money, far more than a double bed in a three star hotel would have cost. After that we set off for Glasgow with my girlfriend at the wheel and me in the passenger seat proclaiming how, if I knew anything about cars, I could make a fortune.

Glasgow is a hard man's city. It is not for the faint of heart or the soft bellied tourist. Only the tough survive on the mean streets of Glasgow. Do you know what they call a head-butt in Glasgow? A Glasgow kiss. This was going to be my sort of town alright. I knew what it was to grow up in a nice, middle-class hillside home overlooking the projects. In Glasgow I would protect and provide for me and my woman. I had to start by finding somewhere for us to stay.

We were not going to sleep in the car again – we returned it in Glasgow – and I was not going to spend another night at my girlfriend’s expense. So she informed me. So I decided we would call on her old school friend who lives in Glasgow and crash the night.
"No way," protested my girlfriend, "we can't just show up on the doorstep of someone I haven't seen in ten years and ask to stay the night."
I wanted to laugh at her, she was so silly to doubt me. Just because I had not had a job for some years did not mean I could not organise us a free night’s accommodation.

We arrived at the old school friend’s door step where I greeted her and her partner with great enthusiasm. They seemed a little surprised to see us, but were hospitable nonetheless. We sat down to a few scotch whiskeys and I began to tell delightful tales about our adventures; like seeing a couple have sex in a ski lift and having an old guy wanting to go dogging with me. They told us about their lives in Glasgow and I tried to listen politely. They were muso types. I was after a bed for the night. I turned up the charm.

"So musos eh," I said, "gotta love Scottish music - U2 are really popular in Australia."
"They’re Irish actually."
"Whatever," I said, "all this talk of great Scottish music is tiring me out, mind if we crash for the night?"

Mission accomplished.

Bright and early the next morning they offered to drop us at the bus station. I let them. When we arrived at the station I went to get out of the rear passenger seat and did something inexplicably silly - even for me. I did not open the car door wide enough to allow myself sufficient room to climb out. Consequently, as I rose up out of the car I smashed the bridge of my nose on the top of the door frame. Fuck it hurt. While it did not make me cry, a blow to the nose always makes water run from my eyes.

Fortunately, nobody saw this act of stupidity. But when I turned back toward the car to say goodbye, I had water streaming down my face. The old school friend looked immediately touched. She said something about how great it was seeing us and missing us heaps and must stay in touch. I tried to tell her that it would not be necessary, since I doubted we would ever need accommodation in Glasgow again, but the pain from my self-inflicted Glasgow kiss was too much.

I just walked away from the car with rain sprinkling from my eyes. My girlfriend asked me what was wrong and I told her the truth. I asked her if there was much blood. Apparently, there was none. I doubted this, maybe it was all internal bleeding. I knew how I must have looked, water streaming down my face, internal blood pouring everywhere. I started to whimper. Then sob. Uncontrollably. Not even a deep fried mars-bar could console me. I was a true Glaswegian hardman.




It ain't over yet I'm afraid, describing a holiday is hard work. It will finish though, sometime, I promise.

Here is the tale of a holiday I took way back in 2006.



I had only a week to enjoy Scotland. It wasn't much time. I had only a couple of hundred quid to enjoy Scotland. It wasn't much money. This is just the sort of challenge I love because, at heart, I am what we call in Australia, a tight-arse.

After landing in Scotland we hired a car and headed for the highlands. I was reluctant to hire a car; it was nearly half our funds eaten up then and there. My girlfriend reasoned that hiring a car was the only way we could see everything we wanted to in the short time available to us. "Besides," she added, "I don't know what you're complaining about – it’s all my money - you haven't worked in six and a half years."

It was probably closer to eight years at that point, but I was not going to quibble about who worked when or what money belonged to who. Instead I spent the long scenic drive to the highlands complaining about the cost of the car and how, if I only had some capital, I would start my own hire car business and make a fortune. No doubt my girlfriend was enjoying listening to my diatribe as she drove the challenging roads that I couldn’t drive because I didn’t have a licence.

On our first full day in the highlands we paid a visit to Nevis Range. The highest point in Scotland is Ben Nevis. It was named after a guy called Ben. And as far as high points go Ben Nevis was pretty low. It was less of a mountain and more of a gentle incline. It couldn't take more than half a day to walk up it - although I would not know for sure because I was not walking anywhere I did not have to.

Instead we rode up one of the 'mountains' in the 'gondola'. I always thought gondolas were boats Venetians paddled around in, but apparently not. It is actually a Scottish word for a ski lift. My girlfriend and I jumped in one of the carriages and began the slow ascent. I wasn't expecting much for my overpriced ride up a hill, but the views I saw were priceless.

At 14:10 on the twentieth August 2006 (I know because I kept the ‘gondola’ ticket) I saw, in a cable car coming back down past us, a fornicating couple. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She sat in his lap, facing away from him, vigorously bouncing up and down. I only had a few moments to saviour it. I pressed my face to the window and did my best to take in as much of the view as I could before the respective carriages passed.

I peeled my face from the window and turned to my girlfriend, who had also witnessed the joyous scenery, albeit not with as much enthusiasm as me. I looked at her with a glint in one eye and a question in the other. "No chance," she quickly doused my flaming passion. I was disappointed, but still buoyant by my recent sexual encounter. In fact, I could think of nothing else while we wandered around the mountain lookout.

This was the sixth time in my life I had witnessed different couples making sweet love, yet I have only been with three women myself. It is quite a surprising statistic. Who would have ever thought that three different women would have slept with me? It does not surprise me that I have seen six couples going at it. There are several billion people on the planet and they all got here through the same act. I would be surprised if there wasn't a ski lift or any other place where people had not done it. Maybe on every inch of that Scottish hillside at some point in history people had done it in the manner of mountain goats.

I guess there were some other good things about that first full day in Scotland, but I don't recall them.

I do recall the next day pretty well. My girlfriend drove us to Inverness to see the famous loch. Loch is a Scottish word for lake. My girlfriend wanted to take a boat tour; I was reluctant given the exorbitant price. I thought about paying and going along for the whinge, but decided against it. My girlfriend supported my decision. So she went off on a boat ride while I looked for something cheaper to do.

I found a reasonably priced cafe and sat down to enjoy my Scottish adventure. I ordered some haggis – a mistake; don’t ever do it – and a glass of wine. When the old woman came with the wine she presented a cask to me, on the side of cask was written, “10% more free”, then she squirted a bit in my cup for me to sample. It was the single classiest thing I have ever been a party to.

As I pushed my haggis around the plate and sipped on my cheap cask wine my mind wandered back to the day before and the joy that was had there. Someone at some stage would have done it in this cafe – desperate staff after hours, some kinky customers in the loo...

I was disturbed from these thoughts by the conversation of two women seated directly in front of me.

"Aussies have the hottest accents," said one of the Scottish lasses. "I know- it's irresistible - I would do an Aussie guy for sure," replied the other.

I tried to get a look at them; the one with her back to me had a lot of hair. I could only partially see the one sitting opposite her; it looked as if she also had a lot of hair. Hair can be pretty sexy on a woman. As for age, they must have been borderline acceptable, maybe late teens. With concerns about appearance and legality solved I began work on my sex plan.

The obvious thing to do was to get them on the gondola at Nevis Range. But then there was the question of my girlfriend. She had the car and the licence so she would have to drive me and the Scottish teenagers back to Nevis Range and then lend me the money for another gondola ride. I couldn't be sure she would be willing to do that. The smart thing to do would be to cross that bridge when I came to it. First, I had to reel in the Scottish lasses.

Since they were so enamoured with the Australian accent I decided to give them a taste of mine. I pretended to talk on the phone, loudly, while laying the accent on quite thick.

"Yeah g'day mate, this is T-Bone. How ya goin’ cobber? Crickey! A flamin’ croc did that to ya? Bloody oath mate - that's the only way to wrestle a croc."

I had succeeded in getting their attention.

"I wish that South African guy would shut the fuck up," said the one sitting behind me, "he is really annoying."
"Annoying?" responded the other, "he is downright creepy. I took a peek at him and he is holding his thumb and little finger like a phone while talking to himself."
"Fucking white South Africans - they're all crazy racists. Let's get out of here."

They left the café and we left town shortly after. It was good to leave Loch Ness and its ignorant inhabitants behind. Fancy believing in monsters - everyone knows there is no such thing as white South Africans. They are called West Australians now.



I'm out of time and energy - I will return and finish soon. But will you come back and read it?

T-Bone is on holiday, again.

And he may be mistaking his blog for his crackbook status.

Hopefully he will have a story to tell when he returns in a couple of weeks.

Well I’ve attended my first and last men’s support group meeting. I never held any hope that I would gain any food from the experience. I had, however, hoped that I may have gained some strength from the experience of other carers. It was only when I got to the first meeting that I discovered this was not an Alzheimer’s support group, but a generic men’s support group. I couldn’t understand why support was needed for people just because they had a doodle. And, I’m sorry to say, it was no clearer to me by the end of the meeting.

At the meeting were about seven guys roughly ranging in age from twenty to fifty. Everyone sat around on the floor in a circle chatting until the guy who had explained to me, poorly, the ‘general’ nature of the group, asked for silence. He announced, “Everyone, we have a new man joining our tribe this week, everyone this is T-Bone.” Everyone said a collective and enthusiastic hi and I introduced myself: “Hi I’m T-Bone; I’ve been a male now for all of my life.” The leader then said for my benefit, “We like to start meetings with a sacred American Indian ritual of cleansing.”

I groaned in horror. “Is there something wrong?” the big chief asked me. I tried to make a joke about how I didn’t realise this was a meeting for Native Americans. For my trouble I got a lecture on the spiritual profundity of the ritual. Apparently this ritual would purify and protect our space by removing negative energies, spirits or influences. I really wanted to say that I doubted taking a ritual ceremony out of its historical and cultural context could have any fucking meaning, but I couldn’t stomach the thought of another lecture.

“Can we really do the ceremony?” asked one of the morons, “T-Bone hasn’t been initiated yet.” “Yeah,” another chimes in, “and he doesn’t have a drum.” “I really don’t mind giving the ceremony a miss,” I added helpfully. The big chief said the ceremony was too important to our energy flow and group harmony for me to miss. “The ceremony will still work if you borrow my rhythm sticks today,” the big chief said, “but you will have to buy a drum at some stage.” “Like fuck,” I said under my breath.

I may have missed some of the subtleties of the ritual, but it seemed to consist of guys beating drums out of time, making oooommmm type noises and burning some incense. After the absurd ceremony was over, the big chief brought out the truth stone. Apparently, by holding this very ordinary stone each of us in turn would be able to speak some inner truth. As the newest participant, it was offered to me first. He said, “Tell us what you are feeling in your own time, T-Bone - let yourself speak through the truth stone. Don’t be afraid to cry. And if you need to take your shirt off, just go for it.”

“Umm I feel a bit awkward.”
“Keep going; speak from right down inside your self – from the parts that make you a man.”
“My testicles?”
“Release yourself – take hold of your manhood and let your manly essence flow forth.”
“Sorry, I’m off wanking for life.”
“C’mon T-Bone, search yourself, what brought you here tonight?”
“Sometimes I fantasize about suffocating my father with a pillow.”
“Okay, T-Bone, pass the truth stone over for someone else to share.”

I got the impression that the big chief was less than comfortable hearing about violent fantasies. Another guy, who must have gotten the same vibe, spoke up.
“No. I think we should hear more from T-Bone.”
“Thanks mate,” I said, appreciating the support.
“I have the same fantasy,” he added.
I thought maybe he had a dad with Alzheimer’s too.
“My daddy,” he went on, “metaphorically suffocated me as a child.”
“I thought you wanted to hear more from me?” I asked.
“Daddy insisted I take over the family business when I all I really wanted was to be a theatre critic. So I know what T-Bone is talking about.”
“That is a bit different,” I corrected him.
“No it isn’t – it’s the same.”
“It’s completely fucking different.” I felt my inner anger rising to the surface.

The big chief intervened before I could cross the circle and snot the wannabe theatre critic. “Our group synergy is wrong,” Moron Number One spoke again, “I told you the cleansing ceremony wouldn’t work if T-Bone didn’t have a drum.” Following this claim we had a ten minute debate about whether the sacred American Indian cleansing ceremony had worked or not. I did not participate. I wished I had after it was decided that we would repeat the ceremony and this time I would use the big chief’s drum and he would use the rhythm sticks.

After a bit more oooommmmmming and unco drumming we resumed with the truth stone. Having listened to everyone I still could not tell what problems these guys had. Some have been through a divorce – like pretty much everyone else who has ever been married. A couple were having mid-life crises - and mustn’t be able to afford a big red sports car. One guy felt his wife did not understand him - who could understand dudes who came to shit like this? Give or take the odd career or parental issue, nearly all the problems related to getting a leg over.

They all seemed to attribute their problems with sexual relationships as the fault of society and the uncertainty about whether men should adopt a traditional, patriarchal role or whether men should be sensitive new age types. This type of role confusion horseshit is the manure in which groups such as this one thrive. Of course the solution was not to decide what sort of person you wanted to be and what the people in your life needed from you, but rather to sit around with a bunch of other dicks beating a drum. And to plan hunting trips.

“A hunting trip?” I asked when told we were about to discuss the progress plan for the proposed hunting trip. “Yes,” I was informed, “we are going on a hunting trip that will be both a physical and spiritual journey into our manhood.” “Wait a minute,” I said, “a hunting trip?” The answer again was yes. I wasn’t mishearing. We were going to discover our inner primitive warrior. “I’ve lived my whole life in the ‘burbs,” I explained, “I’m frightened of nature and of guns.” They reassured me by telling me how they planned to hire a professional hunter to shoot a roo. Then we would smear its blood all over our bare chests and perform an ancient Aboriginal ceremony. “But I’m not indigenous,” I explained, “and I hate camping - my bladder gets nervous.”

They weren’t listening to reason. I made one last effort to steer the group in a saner direction.
“Perhaps, instead of a hunting trip, we could have a get-together where we all bring a plate of food for each other to try.”
“There will be plenty of food on our trip, silly.”
“Really,” I said hopefully, “what like toasting marshmallows on an open fire?”
“No, we will eat the meat of our kill.”
“What?”
“The hunter has guaranteed us a kangaroo. Or our money back.”
“So are you telling me we are going to eat kangaroo meat cooked on a camp fire?”
“With our bare, manly hands.”
“I was thinking we could have a bake night at someone’s house.”
“T-Bone, we will make a man of you yet.”

I was certain that I did not want these guys to make a man or anything else of me. It was time to make an excuse and get the hell out of there.
“I’d love to stay longer,” I informed my brothers, “but I’ve gotta go… somewhere… else.”
The moron looked alarmed.
“We will have to hurry up and do the African dance of farewell and safe journey,” he said.
“No, that’s okay, I’m in a hurry – you guys go ahead and do it without me,” I said as I stood up without giving the moron a chance to argue with me.
“That’s a shame T-Bone,” said the big chief.
“Yeah, it is,” I said while wishing I’d said it much earlier. “But I’ll see you guys next week.”
“Bye T-Bone – don’t forget to get yourself a drum.”

There is no chance I will be going back to a meeting. So I am completely without support. All the support networks I have patiently built up in the last year are gone. My counsellor has dumped me, my Alzheimer’s support group has barred me and the only group that wants me is for brain-dead, drum owning dicks. And I am about due for my annual nervous breakdown.

After my counsellor dumped me I became more and more dependent on my carers support group.

Which is weird because after the first few meetings I decided it wasn’t for me and I wouldn’t go again. I did not see any value in it, if anything it was bringing me down. The group is composed almost entirely of old women caring for their husbands. The women, as is their way, quickly established close friendships and I was left as the odd man out in way that increased my sense of isolation. I would just sit there on the edge of the group feeling awkward. And whenever I would try to share I would struggle to find the words.

It takes not only insight, but courage to speak with real honesty about caring for someone with Alzheimer’s. For me, caring creates a million, often conflicting emotions, which lie just below the surface. Sometimes my heart fills with so many of these emotions I think it will burst. It makes it incredibly difficult to talk about the caring experience without some of these raw emotions coming out. It is even more difficult to control or predict which emotions might overflow. Worse is when they all come pouring out. It can bust me wide open - leaving me feeling raw, exposed and vulnerable. It is never easy to put the pieces back together afterward.

At the same time I will not talk about it in clichéd terms. I won’t reduce someone I love and the complex illness they have to a cliché. Too easily they can become that cliché if it is repeated often enough. And then when the illness changes and the cliché is no longer relevant you don’t even have that anymore.

So all I did in those early meetings was make vague statements like, “it’s not that bad”. Still, the old women would give me sympathetic looks. This would just make me panic about upsetting people who have enough to deal with already. So I would try to reassure them by saying shit like, it is actually pretty fun. But the poor-dear looks only intensified. All this poor pet business was depressing me so I stopped going after a few meetings.

But I was not doing so crash hot without the meetings either. Given too much time to myself I tend to develop unhealthy feelings that the world owes me something. I was never sure what exactly. Or I get angry and I want to blame someone or something for what is happening. A major part of my problem is that I had no prior experience of losing someone. Up until eighteen months ago nobody I loved had died or disappeared or divorced themselves from my life. The last eighteen months, however, have been a constant lesson in loss. And this is where carers group starts to help.

Nothing puts things in perspective like spending time with people caring for – and losing - someone they have loved, in some cases, for more than fifty years. The looks on their faces, the tenderness in their eyes, the love and compassion in their voices is simultaneously beautiful and heartbreaking. It is beautiful that people can love someone so much and for so long; it is devastating that it can all be taken from them in such a cruel way. Hearing them helps me forget about what I may be missing out on in life and appreciate what I do have. Life is precious and really fucking fleeting.

So after a long chat with the ‘group facilitator’ I started going to meetings again. I don’t talk much, I just like to sit and listen to their stories. Some of them I can relate to, occasionally I can offer a tip, and sometimes I can just appreciate that I don’t have to deal with that. I like to hear all about their struggles, their many frustrations, their small victories, their moments of joy and their never ending losses. For me, this helps strip away all the layers of bullshit we call life and reveals what is really important. Food.

Mavis was the first to offer me a care package. Two weeks after I resumed attending meetings Mavis turned up with a massive dish of lasagne. She came over to me and said, “I made this for you and your Dad.” It brought such joy to my heart. I thanked her profusely and tried to tell her how much free food means to me. Some of the other old birds must have overheard because after that the food started rolling in every meeting. I put on close to fifteen kilos in the last few months of carers support group.

Then one week we had two new arrivals. That’s not unusual; so many people are affected by this disease. They did differ in that they were not old women caring for their husbands. One was a blind woman caring for her elderly mother. Can you imagine? Blind and trying to care? The other was a young guy of only eighteen, caring for his fourteen year old sister, who has emergent Alzheimer’s. Apparently it was triggered by a brain injury after a car crash that killed both their parents. Can you imagine? Eighteen, no parents, and caring for a younger sibling? After hearing them that first evening I knew one thing for certain, there are people out there who have it far worse than me and I would never, ever complain about anything again.

The following meeting I saw Mavis arriving with one of her world famous lasagnes for me. It was lucky I had her casserole dish to return, which I had cleaned as best I could, because I am considerate like that. I was also going to have to let her know, gently, that the casserole was far too salty. As I got to her she said, “just leave the dish on the desk T-Bone,” and waddled past me. She never called me by my real name, she always called me pet or dear or love or brave. She had also forgotten to give me the lasagne. Maybe she was dementing too. It happens. Then something far worse occurred, she gave the lasagne to the eighteen year old guy and said, “here you go pet, I made this for you.”

Things got worse when Sylvia arrived and gave her meatloaf to the blind woman. Sylvia said to the blind woman, “darling, I know you can’t see it,” no shit Sylvia, “but I made this meatloaf for you.” The blind woman tried to refuse. She even suggested giving it to the young guy. I thought that was decent of the blind woman to think of me, considering my old comrades, who I’d been through so much with, had forgotten me. “No,” insisted Sylvia, “he already has a lasagne from Mavis and it looks like Dorothy has made him some dumplings so you have it.” Hello, I felt like saying, I’m a young guy too and I won’t turn down food, even though I have never thought particularly highly of your meatloaf I still eat every bit of it. But I just stood shocked while the blind woman eventually accepted.

The next meeting went the same way. I was the forgotten man – just another face in the crowd. I was no longer the odd man out, the object of pity, the poor pet, the brave little soldier or any of the other things I resented at first, but then came to value for the food they brought me. I had become decidedly ordinary.

I was ready to quit. There was no point without the food. Sure, all of these women would become single in the near future, but was that any reason to keep going? I felt at the end of the meeting that I would make some dramatic announcement about how I would not be back and I would see you bitches in hell.

Then something happened to make me think again. Martha, the old duffer, dropped a plate and everyone looked around to see the commotion, including the blind woman. That’s right, the blind woman turned to LOOK. She didn’t turn her ear to the sound, but her eyes. I began to doubt this whole blind thing. And if the blind thing was a scam then the kid’s story was even more suspicious. Who has ever heard of a teenager with Alzheimer’s? And was it not just a bit too coincidental that these two characters turned up in the same week with their hard luck stories? Why didn’t I see it sooner? They were fakers. It was like that Fight Club thing, where they go to support group meetings for pleasure. Or, in this case, they were probably doing it for the food.

The next meeting I tried to expose the fakers to the other, genuine, food-making carers. Before the meeting commenced I sat down next to the so-called blind woman and began thumbing through a copy of Daily Dementia while enduring the smell of a lemon meringue pie Daisy had given her. Daisy had never made me any deserts. Anyway, as I flicked through the newsletter I noticed an interesting article. “Look at this story;” I said loudly to the blind woman, “it’s about Alzheimer’s and aging.”

I had gotten the attention of all the others, except the young guy who was inspecting some rissoles that Joy had given him. I continued, “Says here that one in eight people over seventy will develop dementia. And the odds increase to one in four people over eighty. It doesn’t say anything about the statistics for people under twenty.” I took a long hard look at the young guy. “I’d say it is almost a statistical impossibility.” I could sense some discomfort in the room, perhaps my subtle hints had caused the penny to drop for a few of the gang. “Here you go,” I offered the newsletter to the blind woman, “would you like to read the article for yourself?”

“Oh, thank you, but I wouldn’t be able to read it unless it was in brail,” she lied.
“That’s okay,” I said, “I have a brail copy at home – I’ll bring it in for you next time,” I lied in order to expose a bigger lie. She didn’t respond. I thought the guilty silence said it all.

The meeting went in the usual fashion. Everyone was still really supportive and sympathetic every time the young guy or the blind woman said something. This is one of the problems with old people, they are just too trusting. I clearly hadn’t generated enough suspicion. Before the meeting concluded I made a suggestion that was bound to expose the fraudsters. I suggested that for the next meeting we should all bring along our caree and perhaps a plate of food to share. I was pretty confident that this would ensure we never saw either of the fakers again.

It came as no surprise to me when there was no sign of either the blind woman or the young guy at the beginning of the next meeting. I deposited my packet of crackers on the table and started chomping on some vol-au-vents. As I sampled each plate of food I spoke briefly to all the carers. “The blind woman isn’t here, or the young guy – I wonder why not?” I said while nibbling on some small boys. Then they arrived at the same time; the blind woman with her Mum and the young guy pushing his sister in a wheelchair.

I couldn’t believe it. Was there no lengths they wouldn’t go to maintain the fraud? I wondered where they found the patients. The young guy apologised for being late. “It wasn’t easy to bring my sister all this way on the bus,” he claimed, “but I just desperately wanted her to meet all my super new friends.” It was enough to make me choke on the potato bake I was devouring. I looked around to see if the others were buying this horse shit. To my dismay I saw a look of sympathy in Mavis’ eyes so great that I could not even begin to calculate how many lasagnes it would add up to.

The blind woman claimed to have struggled her way here on the same bus for similar motives. Bulllshit. I asked the blind woman, “you’re mum doesn’t look much like you does she? Sure she is your mum? I mean, you’ve never actually seen her - have you?” Everyone looked away uncomfortably. I turned to the sister in the wheelchair and tried to coax her into speaking, “Where did he pick you up then?” She just sat slumped in her chair. “Oh,” I said to the young guy, “I get it, you’re late because you had to swing by the nursing home and pick out a suitable vegetable that couldn’t rat you out.” Everyone looked even more uncomfortable.

It was clear that my plan had backfired. These trusting old fogies were not nearly suspicious enough. I couldn’t bare the thought of coming to the next meeting and seeing all those food parcels that were bound to appear.

When the facilitator asked me to stay behind I thought we were going to discuss the fraudsters. I spoke to her in conspiratorial tones, “So you’re on to them too. How do you think we should handle this? The others don’t seem to see it and I don’t want to upset them.”
“Ah, T-Bone,” she said, “I think it would be best if you no longer attended meetings.” “Don’t tell me they’ve gotten to you too.”
“You are becoming a block to the progress of this group.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I remonstrated.
“You are a destructive influence within the group dynamic.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re an arsehole – now leave.”

I still didn’t know what the hell she was on about, but I knew where I wasn’t wanted. Fortunately she did not leave me totally high and dry, she gave me the details of a men’s only support group she thought I might be better suited to. I doubted the likelihood that a men’s only support group would provide much food, but I guess I will have to check it out now that my counsellor and my carers group have dumped me.

I like to think of myself as a socially responsible person. So why then, would I masturbate in a public place?

My mother lives in a Queensland retirement community. She has lived in many over the years, but politics and a nomadic streak keep forcing her to move on. Her latest gated community appears to be a failed venture. Of one hundred villas only thirteen have been sold. For me this is great, since there are far fewer old fogies to annoy me.

Even better, this place has a sixty seat cinema in the community hall, which none of the current residents use. When I discovered this I decided to spend my Christmas holidays catching up with some of my favourite films (I don’t know if I have ever told you this, but I have the world’s greatest DVD collection, although I hardly ever get any credit for it). In addition to a few classic flicks I have always wanted to see on the big screen, I also took another kind of film that I like to watch regularly.



I did not take Hot Rackets, the world’s greatest adult entertainment film, with the intention of watching it on the big screen. Honest, I didn’t. Although I have always wondered how it might be enhanced by the cinema experience. But that is not why I took it. I thought, maybe, if the urge overcame me, I might slip it on my laptop late one night and watch it in bed under my blankey. Certainly, I had no premeditated intention to watch pornography on the big screen of a retirement village community centre.

And nor did I watch any, on the first day. I took Casablanca down to the community hall cinema. I happened to observe on the way in that there was no lock on the cinema door. I definitely wasn’t going to watch porn in there if I could not secure the room. Instead, I put such thoughts aside and marvelled at Humphrey Bogart up there on the big screen delivering his rapid fire dialogue.

Yet a little part of me (that I call Norman Tebbit), could not stop wondering how a naked Candida Royale might look up there on the big screen plying her trade. While I have long been curious to experience porn on the big screen, I can think of few things worse than sitting in a public cinema with a bunch of seedy dudes in trench coats whacking off. At least I wouldn’t have that problem here. Nope, I would be the only seedy dude there.

But I wasn’t going to do that.

I did, however, accidentally take my copy of Hot Rackets down with me the next day. By mistake, of course. Having realised my error, I did not compound it by watching it. Instead I watched Land and Freedom and cried my little eyes out at the defeat of the Spanish Revolution. I did watch some nude mixed doubles tennis later than night under my blankey.

Day three and again I took my adult entertainment down to the cinema. This time I decided to put Hot Rackets on - only briefly and only a dialogue scene. I picked out a particularly thoughtful scene where Herb discusses his frigid wife with his friend Bill. For those that haven’t seen Hot Rackets seven billion times, the interesting thing is that in the very next scene Herb’s wife, Liz, defies his frigid assessment by getting it on with the female masseuse at the tennis club.

I decided to watch Liz get her massage. It is a short, but moving scene. Powerful emotions began to arise within me and I responded with certain motions. In my wild lust I failed to adequately prepare. I came all over my Christmas shirt. It is a pretty appalling thing to do, I admit, but it was an appalling shirt and my Mum would be sure to give me another equally ugly one next Christmas. And in a strange way I felt the spillage blended in, and perhaps even enhanced, the winter Christmas scene depicted on the shirt.

Anyway, despite living out a long held fantasy of watching porn on the big screen I felt quite bad afterward. In fact, I hardly slept that night. I felt really seedy. Maybe it was because I had whacked off in a retirement village community hall. Maybe. But maybe that wasn’t entirely my fault. After all, I can’t be held responsible for all of my actions. Still, regardless of who was responsible, it was wrong – I knew that. And it would not happen again. At least not during the day.

The next night, when the oldies were safely tucked up in bed, at about 7.30pm, I snuck down to the hall with Hot Rackets in one hand and my Christmas-shirt-cum-wank-rag in the other. I watched the pool side orgy scene while making sweet love to myself. Again, I wasn’t proud, but I met a need. And again I felt suitably shameful afterward. I knew this couldn’t keep happening; with my wretched luck I was bound to be caught and humiliated once again.

But I couldn’t stop.

The weather was partly to blame. Despite carols, movies and silly t-shirts depicting winter wonderlands, it is friggin hot in Queensland at Christmas. And the frequency of random tropical erections is hard to manage. In this sort of climate sperm production just goes ball-istic. No sooner do I empty my sack than it is swinging between my knees again, choc full of spermies searching for an outlet. And what are the chances of picking up in a sparsely populated retirement village? Virtually zero since Patty-Ann’s passing.

Over the next week I covered myself in so much shame that I could no longer make out the silly pattern on my wank rag anymore. I had developed a system of watching a socially acceptable film most days, when the chances of being interrupted were highest, and then at night I would sneak down and bring shame upon my name, and my Christmas shirt. If someone did burst in, I wasn’t so shameful to have sat in the front row, so the seats in front would block the sight of me abusing myself. I also sat with the DVD remote by my side so I could quickly halt the onscreen action.

Despite my near fool proof plan, the feelings of guilt and the knowledge of past public humiliations left me with a strong sense of impending doom. I guess it should have been no surprise then, the way I reacted when some people burst in on me. Only I was not watching porn. It was during the day and I was revisiting a Cohen brother’s classic, Miller’s Crossing, when the door was thrown open. I felt like I had been caught with my pants down. But I hadn’t. I didn’t even have a scrap of porn on me, let alone any base intentions. All I had was a guilty conscience.

The woman introduced herself as someone from the real estate showing a couple of potential buyers the village. She looked surprised and, I thought, annoyed that the cinema was in use. Maybe she felt that it would not assist sales to have me occupying the cinema. I had to agree - it was not going to be easy to sell the remaining villas while they had a serial masturbator lodged in the cinema.

The agent, in the fake friendly manner of agents, asked me what I was watching. I blurted out, Hot Rackets. But it wasn’t. “Oh I haven’t heard of that one”, she said. I tell her it was made in 1979. The elderly couple politely complemented the facilities and hoped I enjoyed the rest of my movie before shuffling off. I couldn’t understand why I covered up watching a high quality socially acceptable film with a lie about watching a high quality socially unacceptable porn film.

As I went over the incident later, something disturbing occurred to me. What if I wanted to be caught? What if my sinful misdeeds were not born of loneliness or tropical weather? What if, not only this event, but all the escapades I have endured are not the result of misfortune? What if, instead of bad luck, my misadventures are all the result of some deep seated desire for misery and humiliation? The only way to prove this was not the case was to never do anything like this again.

So I returned to the cinema later that night and watched the hot tub scene where Bill and Herb tag-team Googie. What a sick bastard I am. I know it. But please don’t judge me. It gets really hot up north and I do get awfully lonely sometimes. I didn’t think I really wanted to get caught. I just get horny. Why else would I spend Christmas night, New Year’s Eve and the evening of my thirtieth birthday celebrating with myself?

Whether I was motivated by masochism, an over-sexed nature, climate change or a desperate loneliness did not really matter in the end. All that mattered was that I was doing something society condemned in a manner that was really testing my luck. And I knew, as you probably do, that I don’t have much luck. But I could not restrain my passion. So like a runaway train on a collision course with humiliation, the inevitable happened; my luck ran out and I was exposed.

The day before I was due to return home I woke up feeling pretty pleased that I had dishonoured myself so much and not been caught. I only had one more night to get through and I was home free. My thoughts were interrupted by Mum entering the room and asking me if I needed anything washed. I told her, “I don’t have any washing, since you wash every bloody day.” Except I only said that last part in my mind. Honestly, my Mum must have the world’s cleanest place. All she does with her retirement years is sweep, polish, wash and iron.

Anyway, Mum seemed a little disappointed that I had nothing for her to clean. She hung around and tried to make small talk. Old people – they have nothing better to do.
“Are you going to watch another movie tonight?” she asked. “You’re going to go blind you know.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean,” I snapped.
“I just mean you watch a lot of movies, and don’t use that sort of language.”
“Sorry Mum.”
“What’s that?” she said while pointing at the bottom of my bed.

I knew immediately what she was looking at and my heart sank. I looked over to where the corner of my Christmas-shirt-cum-wank-rag was showing from under the bed. Mum started to walk toward it. I tried to beat her to it, but failed. Mum pulled my wank rag out from under the bed and began inspecting it.

“Oh, what’s this you’ve spilt all over your new Christmas shirt?” she asked while scratching at the crustified cum that covered the shirt.
“Nothing Mum – just give the shirt here.”
“I’ll have to soak it,” she said, ignoring me and focusing all her attention on the disgrace.
“No Mum, it’s ruined – I’ll just throw it away.”
“Throw it away – you can’t throw away your Christmas shirt,” she said in dismay.
“I can throw it away, you’re gonna give me another one next year anyway.”
“What are these stains,” she asked while giving the shirt a good sniff.
“I don’t know Mum – please give it here,” I begged her.
“It would make it easier to clean if I knew what it was,” she said more to herself than me.
She began to walk out of the room with the shirt. I heard her mutter, “I’ll ask Gill, he’ll know how to get it clean.”

I chased after her, “No Mum! He won’t. Please don’t ask him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He worked in dry cleaning for thirty-six years. He’ll know what to do.”

So my Mum called her husband, Gill - the man who had only last Christmas inspected my knob after a spider bite. He came out and inspected the shirt. Then he took a long look at me. Mum may have been naïve, but Gill, having belonged to the male species for seventy plus years, knew the score. I felt a great sense of shame, not one I had felt since, since, since, last Christmas. Mum handed Gill the shirt which I had ejaculated on more than a dozen times. He took it with the heavy heart of a condemned man and shuffled off to live out his retirement years.

I would really like to be able to conclude this story by assuring you that I did not return to the cinema on that last evening and jerk off to pornography in the community hall of a retirement village.

I have always been pretty good at receiving gifts. And I have received some pretty good ones in my time. My absolute favourites would have to be some professionally printed and bound copies of my honours thesis and a Dictaphone. It probably says a lot about me that my favourite gifts are copies of something I had written and something that records and plays the sweet sound of my own voice (I could talk to it all day).

Yet for all my great ability at receiving gifts, I have not always been so great at giving them. I think my sister may have also picked up on this rare fault of mine. In particular, I got the impression that my sister was unhappy with the Christmas presents I had gotten my nephews in past years. I formed this impression after she said to me, “T-Bone, every year you get my boys the shittiest presents imaginable.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked in a state of bewilderment.
“You’ve given them a copy of your honours thesis – to share – three years in a row.”
“Mmm,” I was delighted by the fond memory. “And your point is?” I asked.
“They’re eight and six – they don’t care about the intersections between race, class and whatever.”
“Gender,” I added helpfully.

I turned aside and pushed record on my Dictaphone.

“Note to self,” I whispered, “Sister seems confused about thesis subject matter; perhaps she would benefit from a copy for her next birthday.”
“Stop talking to that bloody thing,” my sister interrupted sharply.
“It’s not stupid and stop changing the subject. We were talking about my thesis.”
“No,” said my sister, “we were talking about my children and your inappropriate gifts.”
“I have given them other things,” I protested. “What about that time I gave them a tape?”
“It was a recording of your own voice – done on that silly Dictaphone. You drunkenly sang Somebody to Love, badly, and missing many of the lyrics.”
“It isn’t silly. And I wasn’t drunk – I was emotional – it’s a powerful song.”
“I don’t give a fuck. All I know is you better get them something they will enjoy this year or I will be massively pissed off.”

Following this conversation I formed the view that I had better make a better effort this year or my sister may become mildly upset.

I really couldn’t be arsed buying a present for each of my nephews so I had to get something they could share. I knew they had been after a pet for a while. I knew this by the way they kept asking, “Can we have a pet?” I ruled out a dog – they’re a lot of work and can be pricey. There was no way I was bringing another cat into my world after the heartbreak of losing my own in a messy divorce. I came up with the idea of getting them some goldfish after my brother suggested, “Why don’t you get them some goldfish?”

So I paid a visit to the pet store. The price of the tank was a bit steep, but I was pleasantly surprised by how cheap the fish were. The saleswoman was cute so I bought seven of the little critters. She gave me some instructions, but I just stood there not really listening because I was too embarrassed by her attractiveness. I do recall her mentioning that they were very hardy fish. They would need to be if they were going to survive my nephews.

When I got home I wrapped up my thoughtful gift and hid it in the garage (my nephews have reputations for peaking through the wrapping of gifts left under the tree). On Christmas morning I waited until my nephews had finished unwrapping their other shitty gifts – bikes, scooters, playstations and other junk. Then I carried my gift carefully in from the garage and announced, “look what else Santa has brought you boys.”

I placed the gift on the table and the boys tore into the wrapping. Once the paper was off we were all greeted with the sight of all seven goldfish floating dead on their side. My eldest nephew screamed and ran crying to his bedroom. The younger one took it much better. He thanked his uncle T-Bone and began poking the floating carcasses with his curious little fingers.

My sister didn’t take it so well. She asked me, or rather screamed at me, “Is this some sort of sick joke - what sort of arsehole are you – giving the kids dead fish?” Of course, I hadn’t done it on purpose. I tried to explain this to my sister, but she wasn’t in the mood for explanations. “Well you better go and explain to my son just what the fuck you were trying to do,” she ordered me.

I got the feeling she wanted me to have a chat with her son. Yet I was not exactly sure how to do explain what happened to him, since I could not explain it myself. I mean, the obvious conclusion was that the fish had committed mass suicide, but I could not explain why they did it. Perhaps they had joined some perverse, antichristian, satanic doomsday cult? Maybe that is why they were so cheap? Maybe the cute woman had sold me messed up, cultish fish?

Or maybe, although it seemed unthinkable, I had unwittingly contributed to their untimely deaths. I did pour them straight from the plastic bag into the tank without letting them acclimatise. Also, it probably didn’t help that I had not fed them in the two days before Christmas. Well, I couldn’t feed them after I had wrapped the tank in Christmas paper. Wrapping them also required unplugging the filter and thermostat (I reckon the temperature in the garage would have been over 45°C). This probably didn’t increase their survival chances. Still, I would have expected them to at least hang on until Christmas day.

I decided that I would just have to deal with my eldest nephew honestly. I went and found him lying on his bed sobbing into his pillow. I sat down on the bed next to him, rubbed his little back and said, “there, there,” in my soothing, great guy kind of way. After the sobbing had died down my nephew asked me a question that every parent must get asked sooner or later.

“Uncle T, why would Santa give us dead fish for Christmas?”
“I’m sure Santa didn’t mean to give you dead fish. Santa is very busy at Christmas and he probably just forgot to feed them and they starved to death. Or maybe he neglected to control the water temperature and the fish were boiled alive. The point is Santa tried to give you some fish.”
“Why did Santa leave the price sticker on the tank?”
“Did he?” I asked. “Well maybe Santa has been hit by the economic downturn and since the elves are unionised these days he might have outsourced the gift making.”
“If Santa is real,” he persisted, “why did you make me wait in the car outside the pet store and then make me hold a bag of fish all the way home?”

There was no point in maintaining the charade, the kid was too old and suspicious to be bought off by tales of economic rationalism.

“Well my boy,” I told him, “Santa ain’t real. I bought you the fish.”
“So you killed my fish?”
“Well now I would not say that exactly. For all we know, they may have killed themselves. Or maybe god just decided that it was time.”
“Why would god kill my fish on Christmas? If god was good he wouldn’t do that.”
“True, god has a pretty sick sense of humour.”
“Then why should we worship god? And who made god anyway?”

Jesus, the kid wasn’t even buying into god anymore.

“Listen mate,” I explained, “god isn’t real either okay. And before you ask, neither is the Easter bunny or the tooth fairy or justice.”
“Why do grown ups lie about god?”
“Because science is hard.”
“Is heaven real?”
“No son.”
“Then what will happen to my fish now?”
“When your little brother is finished playing with their carcasses I will flush them down the toilet.”
“Is that what will happen to Mummy when she dies?”
“Don’t be silly – Mummy is too big to fit down the toilet – we’ll have to burn her first.”

I think he thanked me after that, but it was difficult to know because he had started sobbing into his pillow again.

“It’ll be right mate,” I said before leaving the room, “Uncle T will take you back to the pet store again and you can wait in the car while I ask the cute woman inside for Santa’s money back.”

Having consoled my nephew I wandered into the kitchen. I was greeted by Mum, she asked me why I wasn’t wearing the Christmas shirt she had gotten me. I had no answer for her. I was sick of being asked questions. Admittedly it was the toughest one yet. I coughed and spluttered for a minute or two before my sister came marching out of her son’s bedroom.

“Good one dickhead,” she said to me, “now my son doesn’t believe in anything. Not only have you ruined Christmas, but you’ve also managed to turn my son into a fucking depressed nihilist. I hope you are happy.”

To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t that happy. Deep down I suspected my sister was disappointed with the way I had handled things. Worse still, I felt that maybe her overall opinion of me had worsened as a result of the day’s events. I got this impression from the way she said, “You know, I had my doubts before, but now I am certain that you are the world’s biggest fuckwit.”

But then, I have never been very good at reading people. Maybe this was her way of saying thank you for the copy of my thesis I had given her for Christmas.

Thirty-one years ago today a child was born. What is so special about that I hear you ask? I ask you not to interrupt me. The child’s birth was not only special, it was a miracle.

On a very hot and humid New Year’s Day, 1979, a group of friends had gathered together to fend off their New Year’s Eve hangovers by drinking some more. A heavily pregnant Mother Mary was at that gathering. She was lighting a ciggie when she got the old familiar labour signs, which I cannot describe because I am a man. Mother Mary, however, knew the score. This was her third time. She was no virgin.

The problem arose that no one at the gathering was sober enough to drive Mary to the hospital. The chances of finding anybody in Australia sober enough to drive on New Year’s Day in 1979 were remote. It looked like the little baby would be born in a garden shed. But then the wise men of the gathering came up with a plan. Because they could not drive, and they had no donkey, it was decided that they would put Mother Mary into a wheelbarrow and push her to the hospital.

There is apparently a photograph out there, old and faded by now I would imagine, of Mary in labour smoking a cigarette while being pushed down the street in a wheelbarrow. I would dearly love that photo.

The wise men were not exactly sure how to get to the nearest hospital so they decided to follow a bright star in the east. The bright star in the east is better known as the sun. It was very hot; too hot to follow for long. After only about one-hundred metres of pushing the drunken wise men decided to return to the house and formulate a new plan over some ice cold cans of lager.

The wise men decided that the father of the expectant child should be called. The problem was, Mother Mary kept insisting that she did not know the father of her child. Her husband, she insisted, was not the one, nor was the milkman. The child was immaculately conceived, she claimed. The wiser women took her out of the wheelbarrow and out of the sun.

The wise women called Mary’s husband and told him to come quickly, his wife was in labour. To everyone’s amazement Joseph actually turned up to collect his wife. To everyone’s disappointment he was drunker than all the wise men and women put together. The wise ones felt it was not a good idea for Joe to drive, but he was wiser than all of the wise ones put together, so he thought. The wise ones thought it wise not to argue – if Mary and her unborn child were to be killed by a drunk driver it would be best if the driver was her husband.

Joe managed to steer the car all the way to the hospital without injuring anyone. He pulled up outside the emergency entrance. Without shutting off the engine and without looking at his wife - without even taking his eyes from the road before him for a second - he said to his wife, “I’ll see you in a couple of days.” It was the first words he had spoken to her in nine months.

The news of Mary’s pregnancy had not been welcome news. Joe and Mary had already had a boy and a girl and did not want any more children. Far more than a child, Joe wanted to own a pub. And plans were already well under way to make that dream a reality. He had identified a nice country pub that was for sale and Mary and Joe had even sold their home. So Mary was booked in for an abortion.

But Mary was not so keen on moving to the country or a life as a publican’s wife. She was also a vaguely religious person. On the way to her appointed foetus removal (Mary had to drive herself to the abortion clinic - Joe had more important things to do), she pulled the car over to the side of the road and started to weep uncontrollably. When she had finished crying she turned the car around and went home. At home she told her nine year old daughter, “Guess what? Mummy is having a baby.” The abortion had been aborted.

When Joe returned home that evening from a hard day’s drinking his excited daughter raced over to him and shouted excitedly, “Mummy is having another baby.” Joe turned to his wife and in the ice cold voice that was his trademark said, “You fucking bitch.” And those were the last words he spoke to her until they arrived at the hospital nine months later.

Since Joe refused to talk to her Mary was left to fight a lone battle to save their house. Mary spoke to the couple who had put a deposit on their house and the couple, admirably, accepted their deposit back. However, the greedy real estate chain, Herod’s Homes, did not like this at all. They sued Mary for two-thousand dollars, a lot of money then (and now). The court case lasted close to six months before the real estate chain withdrew its claim. Apparently it wasn’t great for Herod’s corporate image to be dragging a pregnant woman through court for a sum of money that was a pittance to them, but would have bankrupted her.

Back at the hospital, New Year’s Day, 1979, Mary was giving birth, to what exactly the doctors were not sure at first. But it was causing Mary some considerable discomfort. New Year’s Day stretched into the 2nd January and then the third. A fourth day of labour was looking a distinct possibility when, at ten minutes to twelve, amidst a portentous storm, a baby began to emerge.

The doctors were concerned that the baby was coming out wrong. At first they thought the shoulder was beginning to emerge, and then it looked like it was back first. Finally one of the doctors yelled in horror, “oh my god – it’s the head.” The Messiah was born weighing in at eleven and a half pounds – most of it head. The nurses, jointly, carried the baby from the room. The doctors informed Mary that they were going to run some tests to ensure that the baby was human.

So the miracle of the child's birth was complete, all that remained to be seen was whether the Holy Father would acknowledge the son.

Mary spent several days recuperating in hospital before Joe returned to collect his wife and new child. He stood in the doorway of the hospital room and said, “The child’s name will be T-Bone.” Mary tried to protest, “But I’ve already picked out a name – I want to call him Jesus.”

“That’s a poof’s name,” stated Joe, “can you imagine a guy called Jesus going in to a pub and ordering a beer? No chance.”

Exhausted from giving birth to the eleven pound head, Mary did not fight it.

Joe, Mary and the child king went home to start their new life. Mary was distressed to see her other two children playing naked out on the street. “Joe, who has been looking after the kids?” she asked.

“Huh? Oh, they’ve been lookin out for each other.”

He smelled of whisky.

“Why are they naked?” Mary asked.
“I had to put ‘em outside and hose ‘em off – they were starting to smell worse than the dogs.”

Inside the house, which Mary had left spotless, she became even more distressed.

“Christ Joe! It looks like a fucken manger in here. What’s happened?”
“I gave the little ones a wash in the bath tub.”

The ‘little ones’ were the two greyhounds that he owned and trained.

“You had them in our bathtub?” Mary asked.
“Yeah – I guess they must have dried themselves all over the house.”
“Why would you do this, Joe?”
“Because there is a big dog race in Grafton next week. Gotta get ‘em ready.”
“Grafton – that’s nine hours away Joe – what about the newborn?”
“You had it – you look after it.”

If it hadn’t happened already, it was probably around that time that Mary started building the wall that would separate her and Joe forevermore. But as one wall went up another came down. As the morning wore on Joe began to fall under the spell of the not so little baby T-Bone. He even held baby T-Bone for a moment – a moment was all anyone could hold him before the weight of that head became too much. Joe even asked Mary if there was anything he could get her down the shops. She asked for cleaning products.

Joe returned three day later with no cleaning products, nor any gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense (although he did smell – of stale alcohol). All he had was the hangover that comes from a three day bender. And following his three day absence he said unto his family, “I hope you’ve been feedin’ the little ones.”

POSTSCIPT

The little ones never won a race, much to Joe’s disappointment. One night Joe took them for a drive to ‘the country’. Perhaps they got a second chance in a country pub like Joe always wanted.

Years later, when the family were driving through the country they pasted a pub. Joe said to his children in the back, “Look kids – that’s the pub that was going to be your new home – well not your’s T- Bone.”

Joe went on to be diagnosed with dementia while still at a young age, perhaps caused by alcohol related brain damage. By then no one cared enough about him to look after him, except T-Bone.

T-Bone has always felt – and never more so than on this thirtieth anniversary of his life – that his existence is something of a miracle. This has also led him to wonder if his life should not serve some higher purpose than playing Football Manager and caring for the person who never wanted him.

T-Bone is going on holidays for a couple of weeks and hopes his readerS enjoy the break. He is also talking about himself in the third person again.

I went to see my head shrinker for my weekly inspection yesterday.

I told him how my work supervisor asked me to do him a favour. And when your boss asks you to do a favour you either do it or you find the only work they have going is cleaning out the crappers for the next year. So I said fine. Fortunately, he only wanted me to look after his car while he is away. It seemed easy, but now it is causing me all sorts of grief.

Firstly, the inconsiderate fucker only left a bit of petrol in it, so if I do give it a bit of a run, as he asked me, I will leave it just about empty. Is that uncool? I mean, obviously he should have never left me in this predicament, but do I just take that self righteous view or do I fill it up, or do I replace what I use, even though I am only using it to please him?

Then there is the question of the exterior of the car. I parked it under a tree for shading purposes. Some birds have taken the liberty of shitting on his car. The car is in my care while this besmirching is taking place, but surely I did the right thing in parking in the shade. Is it my responsibility to clean it up?

Also, I noticed there is a fingernail clipping in the dashboard tray that most normal people keep money or other crap in. Obviously I didn’t leave the clipping there – I would never do anything that uncouth. My concern is that when he returns he may not recall that it is his – and therefore reach the unfair conclusion that I am the grotty culprit. So should I remove the finger nail? Or should I leave a reminder note next to it stating that it doesn’t belong to me?

I asked my counsellor, what he thought I should do. My counsellor was silent. I asked him again, “so what do you think I should do about the car problems?”

“Put petrol in or don’t, clean it or don’t, remove the finger nail, leave it or write a note - it doesn’t really matter.” He delivered all this ‘advice’ in a listless tone. It seemed odd. At the very least, he almost always cautions me against leaving notes for people. I had been noticing in recent sessions that he seemed increasingly distant and unconcerned with my problems.

I asked my counsellor, “Is there something wrong?” He kind of shrugged and looked away. I probed some more, “Is there something you would like to talk about?”

“I guess I have been kind of stressed about my workload lately.”

I wondered how somebody who was being paid to have his patient counsel him could find work stressful. I made some sympathetic noises and then tried to get things back to being about me by hitting him with a different problem.

“What about this then. I had another bout of uncontrollable crying the other day.”
“What was the trigger?” he asked.
“I was overtaken at the pool.”
“And?”
“Overtaken by an amputee swimmer.”
“That’s not so bad. Plenty of disabled people fully compensate for the loss of a limb.”
“Limbs – plural - it was both.”
“Arms or legs?”
“Arms.”
“Jesus. How was he even moving? Was he just bobbing his head along?”
“She – and yes, she was just bobbing along.”
“That is appalling. In that case, I think crying is an appropriate response.”

“How do you think she wipes her bum?” I wondered aloud.

Silence.

He wasn’t giving me anything. I tried to add an element of greater psychological complexity to spice things up.

“I don’t think it is just about shame and unfitness,” I said, “because there are other things. For example, I know my bike tyres need more air and I know pumping them up will make riding easier, but I can’t be arsed pumping them up. What does than mean?”

“It means you are lazy and stupid.”

I was sensing some vibe that I had not felt before. He was either trying some new kind of shock therapy or he didn’t care about me any more. Maybe my problems no longer excited him. Having already indulged him once, I was reluctant to ask again, but he left me with no choice. I asked my counsellor, “is there something wrong?” His answer hit me like a bombshell.

“T-bone, there is something I have been meaning to say to you for a while now… I don’t think we should see each other any more.”
“Jesus!” I sounded frantic, “I thought we worked well together, I thought I could tell you anything. You get me. Why? Why?”
“I just think we have gone as far as we can go.”
“Well, I don’t think that? Doesn’t my opinion count?”

Silence.

“Don’t just sit there,” I pleaded, “say something. After all these sessions you at least owe me an explanation.”

“You’re becoming too dependant on me,” he claimed. “You need to make life decisions for yourself. I can’t tell you what kind of pizza to order. You’re just too needy. You need to stand on your own two feet.”

Oh, that hurt - cut me right to the (T) bone.

“You aren’t exactly perfect either,” I bit back. “What about that time I was hysterical? My whole world was caving in and what did you say?”

Silence.

“I’ll tell you what you said,” I put on my best mocking voice, “you said, ‘Have you had that mole on your hand checked? That is a common place for melanomas to develop.’ That’s what you said. Do you think it is wise to suggest to someone having a nervous breakdown that they might have cancer? Arsehole.”

“Now T-bone,” he whined, “I had hoped we could keep this amicable. I still care about you. As for professional help, there are plenty of counsellors you can pay to see.”

“Oh you fucker,” I exploded, “You think I would pay a therapy whore? I’m not cruising the phone book for any old therapist who will promise to love me and listen to me for a one hour session on the couch – so long as my money is good. What the fuck are you anyway? Some kind of therapy pimp? You reel in the punters and then whore out your friends in the Psyche Association? What sort of commission do you get? Hm? Mr Pimp, Mr John Walker.”

The bastard started reasoning with me about how this was a free service for people with very serious problems. And how they can only make so many sessions available and how I was doing a lot better than when I first came to see him. My feelings of rage were dying, but the hurt was still great.

“But I can change,” I said pathetically, “I can develop serious problems again. I can relapse – spiral out of control. Just give me one more chance,” I continued, “I will develop some real problems. Have I ever told you how I fancy my Mum sometimes? Or how I had that dream about my brother?”

“Please, you’re becoming clichéd,” he chided me.
“We haven’t even talked about my sex life yet.”
“I got the impression there wasn’t much to talk about.”

Silence.

“…what about my fear of ducks then? Surely that is interesting and worth another session?”

He just looked at me sadly. I went on the offensive again.

“Are you seeing someone else? Is that it?”
“I see lots of people.”

“Slut. Who are they? What have they got that I don’t? Is it anorexia, hypertension, bipolar? Don’t tell me it’s bipolar. Tell me it’s not fucking bipolar! I can give you fucking bipolar; if that is the sort of shit fashionable mental illness you want.”

“Please, you’re embarrassing yourself, just leave,” he said with unmistakable finality.

“Alright, alright, I’m going, but I want you to know that you are letting the most mental patient you ever had walk out that door. Maybe not today or even tomorrow, but one day you will realise just what a great big messed up head you let go. Then you’ll be sorry.”

The following incidents happened to a friend of mine.

My friend was trawling the internet for love (yes - he is a sad, lonely, foolish wreck of a person), and he met a Christian woman. He met her on a Christian dating site. He is not a Christian, but he is poor, and Christian dating sites are free, and he had heard that religious types are supposed to be charitable toward the poor. So my friend was eager to meet the Christian woman and see just how ‘charitable’ she was.

Yet what my friend had not considered when courting a Christian is that they are the most sexually uptight people on earth. In fact, this particular woman was so uptight that she refused to even meet my friend until he had a sexual health test, lest she come anywhere near his sexually-diseased, heathen body.

My friend was very reluctant to do this, not because he thought he might have something (he has not had sex in a very long time), but because he assumed the testing would involve showing his penis to a doctor.

Coincidently, I share my friend’s phobia about showing my willy to a medical professional. The many committed readers of this blog would know that I have, on numerous occasions, treated my own groin related injuries and illnesses rather than seek professional help.

Anyway, my friend could think of no way to fake the test, so he trimmed his pubic hair and took his sexual desperation to the doctor for a check up. After a nerve wracking forty-five minute wait, he finally saw the doctor. The doctor did not inspect him; in fact, the doctor did fuck all but scribble a referral to a sexual health clinic. Those fucking doctors get all that money and they won’t even lower themselves to inspect a humble knob!

When my friend read the referral, the relief at having being spared a knob inspection at the doctors was quickly replaced by another fear. My friend would be required to do a blood test for Aids and Hepatitis – no worries there – and he would have to do a urine test for Chlamydia. My friend became immediately alarmed. He has a nervous bladder and the prospect of urinating under such pressure was terrifying - far more terrifying than the prospect of having Chlamydia. My friend even contemplated abandoning the whole test because of his phobia.

Coincidently, I share my friend’s phobia. I fear ever having to spend time in a hospital, not because it means I am sick, but because I may have to wee lying down with only a thin curtain to hide me from other - waiting and listening - patients and hospital staff.

The thought of having sex with a Christian (code for potential virgin) drove my friend to persist in formulating a workable plan. My friend decided to urinate into an empty jar in the comfort and privacy of his own home. He could then smuggle the jar into the sexual health clinic, pour the contents into the specimen container and emerge triumphant. No doubt the nurse, or whoever collects the wee, would fall in love with the raw manliness of my friend’s apparent achievement.

My friend hunted around for an appropriate vessel for transporting his wee. Finally, he settled on an empty jar of pasta sauce. He was very careful about cleaning out the jar. It would have been a double blow had the test revealed Chlamydia and traces of pasta sauce – such a result would, of course, increase the unlikelihood that a clinic worker would ask him out or a Christian would sleep with him.

So my friend peed into the very clean pasta sauce jar. Even this was a test for my friend’s nervous bladder. The new experience of weeing into such a small area caused considerable hesitancy in his bladder. After fifteen minutes or so he overcame his stage fright - stage fright despite the lack of an audience! A new low for my friend. My friend had quite a number of new lows to hit before this episode would finish.

Coincidently, my friend, like me, lives with his father who has Alzheimer’s disease. His father was a little more agitated than usual so my friend decided to take him along to the clinic. My friend shoved the sample in his backpack, grabbed his dad and set off for his test.

At the clinic he was told that, in addition to a blood sample, he would need to give a urine sample. “Oh, really?” he acted surprised. My friend was asked if he would like to take the urine container away and return it another time. He had not considered this would be a possibility - it would have saved him the trouble of his covert operation. Still, it was more impressive to be able to say to the receptionist, “No, I’ll do it here,” in a really heroic voice. She asked him if he would mind waiting until the nurse – who was on her way - had come to take him for his blood test. “Not at all,” he said in a voice of authority – like a MAN - like a man who had complete command over his bladder.

While waiting for his blood test my friend sat with his bag in his lap. His father passed the time by asking people in the waiting room what they were there for – and don’t people just love being asked why they are in the waiting room of a sexual health clinic? My friend was so embarrassed by his father’s inappropriate questioning that he did not immediately notice the development of an even more embarrassing situation.

Eventually my friend noticed rising damp around the crotch underneath the bag. He quickly peered under his bag and saw his urine leaking through the bag onto his pants. It looked like he had pissed himself. Strictly speaking, this was not untrue.

He immediately covered his crotch with the bag again. My friend panicked about what he could do. The wet patch widened with every second he did nothing. My friend prayed desperately for some uncooked bacon to mop up the wee. After about thirty terrifying seconds, he peered under the bag again. His father, who can ordinarily be counted on to notice nothing except clouds and ants, also saw the disgrace.

“What’s this?” said his curious father while running his index finger over the wet patch of the bag. “Don’t touch it,” my friend desperately whispered. “It’s just some spilled orange juice,” he added, this time loudly enough for anyone else in the waiting room that may have noticed. My friend picked up his bag, held it in front of his wet shorts, and headed for the toilets. As he left the room he hurriedly told the receptionist that he couldn’t wait so he would do the urine sample now, in a voice that no longer conveyed a man in command of his bladder.

In the toilets he looked inside his bag and saw the pasta jar with the lid still on, but not securely, and half the contents spilled out. My friend cleaned himself up as best he could but was still left with the problem of the urine sample. After the trauma of the botched covert operation it was going to be very hard to get in to the relaxed state of mind required for urination.

My friend is one of those sad arse guys (in case you had not figured that out yet) who has a pet name for his penis. He was using it now to encourage some wee into the container. “C’mon Norman Tebbit,” he urged, “just this one time please, perform for me. I will never ask anything of you again.” It was a lie, and maybe Norman knew it, because he did not perform.

Desperate and out of other viable alternatives, my friend opened the bathroom door part of the way and peered out. He tried to get his Dad’s attention. “Dad,” he whispered. His father was busy interrogating the sexually diseased and didn’t hear. He called a little louder. Still his father didn’t notice, although most of the other people in the waiting room seemed to notice. He called loudly, “Dad!” His father said, “What?”

“Can you come here for a tick?”
“What for?” his father replied.

Jesus, this was not going well. My friend asked again, but without hope. Miracle of miracles (maybe God wanted him to date the Christian) his father actually came over to the toilet door. My friend dragged his father inside the lavvy and ordered his father to piss in the specimen container. His father did not bat an eyelid; it was as if people asked this of him all the time. Father and son went in to a toilet cubicle together and son held the container while father began to effortlessly wee into it. The son marvelled at his father’s wonderfully liberated bladder. In this regard, at least, the apple had fallen very far from the tree.

Trouble struck again when his father’s wee had almost filled the container, but showed no sign of abating. “Okay, stop now,” said the son. His father did not respond. One can only hope and pray that nobody was in one of the other stalls listening as my friend tried to get his father to stop.

“Okay Dad - stop now - that’s enough - it’s too much - It’s not going to all fit Dad - STOP! Please, STOP! Oh GOD!”

And the cup spilleth over.

My friend felt the warm trickle of his father’s piss run over his hand as he pulled the container away. My friend quickly washed his hands and the outside of the container. As he did so he could not help but notice the fine quality of the sample. There was no way his father had Chlamydia.

Father and son then emerged from the toilets. The son looked about as composed as a person who had just spilt his urine on himself, had held a container centre metres from his father’s wrinkly old knob and then had his father piss on his hand, could look. The nurse who was ready to take his blood sample commented that he looked faint and asked if he was worried about having blood taken. My friend said no and took his blood test in a state of numb despair while contemplating how he had cheated, poorly, on a urine test.

And this is the story of how I learned that I do not have Aids or Hepatitis and that my father does not have Chlamydia.

Walking down a lane behind a local pub, minding my own business, I noticed a wallet on the ground. I looked around and saw nobody. I picked it up, shoved it in my pocket and moved on hurriedly. I felt like a thief. I didn’t know if I was one yet.

When I got to a secure location I opened up the wallet and examined the contents. There was one twenty dollar note. There was a drivers licence belonging to one Dick Face; date of birth 2/8/87, non-organ donor. There was one student card; same name, similar photo. There was one bank card; same name. There was a piece of paper with a girl’s name, Felicity Sweetheart, and a phone number written on it.

From the available evidence I formulated the following hypothesis. Dick was a turd burger. Show me a twenty-one year old male and I will show you a turd burger. Besides, what sort of person doesn’t donate their organs? Turd burgers, that’s who. From the student card and the close proximity of the wallet to the pub I assumed Dick cannot handle liquor although he persists in trying.

The question now was what I should do with Dick Face’s possessions.

I had to do the decent thing; I had to call the woman’s phone number, pretend to be Dick and see if I couldn’t get a date. Nah, I couldn’t do that – what if she fancied me and I had to pretend to be Dick Face for life? Plus, it might be immoral to pretend to be someone you are not for the purposes of dating.

Still, I didn’t even know how or why he had her number. Maybe she had given it to him by mistake. I have quite recently been on the receiving end of a wrong number – well the number was right; I was wrong apparently. Surely, I should call her and check? I might at least be able to spare him the embarrassment of calling a woman who didn’t intend for him to have her number.

Even if she were, for some foolish reason, interested in Dick she may fall in love with me if I call her up. I could call her and explain that I have Dick Face’s wallet and I want to get it back to him. Women are really turned on by such displays of honesty.

So I called her up.

“Hello is that Felicity?” I started strongly.
“Yes, who is this?”

She sounded hot.

“My name is T-Bone and I have Dick Face’s wallet.”
“Sorry? I don’t understand. Do I know you?”
“No. But I think you know Dick. At least, you gave him your name and number.”
“I’m sorry; I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Did you give your name and number to a guy – possibly at the King’s pub?”
“No.”
“You’ve never heard of a guy called Dick Face?”
“Oh, I think I know the guy you mean – he’s in my Chemistry class – he’s flunking and he’s paying me to tutor him. Are you his friend?”
“No – I just found his wallet.”
“I still don’t get it. What does that have to do with me?”

That was a pretty good question. I was starting to think this call wasn’t one of my better ideas. I ploughed on nonetheless.

“I thought you might be able to help me track him down so I could return his wallet.”

This was supposed to be the point where she realised what a great guy I must be and ask me out.

“No, I can’t help you I’m sorry, he calls me and we meet in the chemistry labs.”
“So you’re not dating him or anything.”
“Definitely not – why do you ask?”

It was time to be bold.

“Because I am sensing some chemistry between us,” I said smoothly.
“Please don’t call here again,” she said before hanging up.


Well, that went pretty well, I thought.

For some reason, the thought that Dick wasn’t dating Felicity made me hate him less. I had been tempted to spend his twenty dollars on drugs and forget the whole thing. But my resolve to track him down had returned now. I figured I could really do with the Karma. And, after all, I am a great guy. That is what Felicity failed to appreciate.

Anyway, I continued my search via the world’s most popular free drug – crackbook. Sure enough, I found his profile. I sent him a message to let him know I’d found his wallet and if it suited I would leave it at the pub for him to collect. The following day I received the following message from him:

Hey,
Thanks heaps for getting in touch with me. Since I don’t have my wallet I can’t access any money to pay for the journey to the pub. Would you mind dropping it to my place (and then he provided an address at the other end of town)?
Regards,
Dick Face.

Well fuck that for a joke, I thought, before sending a reply agreeing to his unreasonable request. Fuck knows why I did that. I think it is because I have an inability to say no to people and I have a deep need to be seen as a decent person by all the world.
So I drove all the way across town to the Face residence and delivered the wallet. Dick greeted me at the door – shirtless. My kind heart twisted a little, but I remained calm. Dick thanked me profusely for my amazing honesty. I had to admit, he had a point. Dick also offered me the twenty dollars from his wallet as a reward. Unwilling to tarnish my reputation, I declined.

He did not offer the reward a second time. I believe courtesy and custom dictated that he offer me the reward again, I then decline again, albeit a little less convincingly, he offer the reward a third time and I begin to relent a little and then he insist and I finally I begrudgingly accept. None of this happened; instead Dick Face put his wallet in his pocket and asked me if he could get a ride back across town with me.

I consented and Dick walked to the car with me – still without a shirt. So there I was driving a shirtless man across town. Have I ever told you that this is one of my worst nightmares? I only hope nobody I know saw me. Strangers were bad enough. I was so uncomfortable that I even contemplated winding down my window at traffic lights and telling other drivers that I didn’t really know Dick, I was just giving him a lift because I am a great guy.

As we drove Dick started going through his wallet. Maybe he thought I had stolen something. I momentarily panicked that I had forgotten to put his chemistry tutor’s number back. I was immediately assured when Dick took it out and asked, “Who’s number is this again?” He immediately answered his own question.

“Oh, that’s right. It’s the number of a girl I picked up the other week and shagged senseless. Poor girl was gaga by the time I’d finished with her. Wanted me to call her again and everything. I won’t though, once I’ve shagged ‘em I move on to the next one. Plenty more where she came from.”

Since I had called her and tried to cut his grass, I knew he was lying. I wanted to scream out, you dirty shirtless, lift-scabbing, non-reward giving, LIAR! But I didn’t, I just listened to his bullshit and thought to myself, you are one sad loser Dick. Then it hit me, I had more in common with him than I had realised. I just couldn’t see it because of the shirtlessness. Dick was a failure, a loser, a bullshit artist and completely repulsive to women.

Dick Face is me. I am Dick Face.

I got a call from my special friend’s neighbour. My special friend is Jimmy and he is mental, retarded, simple, a few cards short of a deck, a few shillings short of a shilling, a few sandwiches short of a picnic, a few toes short of a foot, a few… Anyway, my Dad had cared for Jimmy, but now my Dad was in my care and Johnny, by default, also came under my care.

This doesn't bother me because a caring heart is better than everything.

And besides, Johnny is actually a pretty cool dude. I admire his disregard for social norms concerning showering, clean clothes, haircuts, shaving and public profanity. Jimmy can pretty much look after himself except for some help with his shopping. Although recently he has contracted shingles so I have to pour cream onto my smooth historian hands and then rub it carefully over his unwashed, lumpy body.

I never complain about this because a clean heart is better than everything.

Anyway, Jimmy’s neighbour called to let me know that Jimmy’s sister had paid Jimmy a visit, taken him to the bank and withdrawn several thousand dollars from his account and then abandoned him outside the bank. I thanked the neighbour, who I gathered was an elderly Christian from his voice and constant prayer references, and I told him I would deal with it. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to deal with it, but I knew stealing from a mong was pretty poor form.

I also know a righteous heart is better than everything.

I rang Jimmy’s sister to confront her (to the extent that it is possible to confront someone over the phone). She immediately started crying and telling me how her fiancé was in prison and they needed money to bail him out and then get married before he faced sentencing. Apparently, judges look more kindly on married men when determining sentences (perhaps because marriage is punishment?). I kept saying, “oh, I’m really sorry, oh, dear, that’s just awful,” as she told me the whole sordid tale. I told her not to worry about the money, thus ensuring she would steal from him again.

I figured a forgiving heart is better than everything.

Less than two days later I got another call from the Good Samaritan neighbour. This time the neighbour on the other side of Jimmy had come in and taken three hundred dollars from him. Apparently, open season had been declared on Jimmy’s finances. These, perhaps, are the hidden economic crises affecting poor people all the time. I couldn’t let this slide.

As they say, an indignant heart is better than everything.

I drove out to Jimmy’s ready to confront the stealing neighbour with my righteous fury. As I pulled up I spotted the neighbour in his front yard. The fucker was massive. He had muscles and tatts everywhere. Maybe I wouldn’t confront him. Maybe I would drive home and call him up and ask him nicely not to take money from the intellectually disabled. Maybe I would let the whole thing slide.

After all, a preserved heart is more important than everything.

But it was too late - he had spotted me and started over toward the car. I got out of the car and walked determinedly toward the giant of a man. When we got near each other he held out his hand to shake it. I said sharply, in a voice that was not my own, “I’m not shaking your fucken hand you thieving cunt.” He said, “dear lord, you must be T-Bone and you must be looking for Jimmy’s other neighbour.” I would never have guessed the mild mannered Christian telephone voice could have belonged to a man the size of a brick shithouse.

I always say, a non-judgemental heart is better than everything.

I was still a bit shaken up while he prattled on about the misdeeds of the other neighbour. All I wanted to know was how big he was. My confidence had been dented by the size of this guy. More importantly, I wanted to know why the fuck he couldn’t deal with the neighbours. They weren’t going to mess with this guy, Christian or not, he was one big unit. Or maybe he didn’t want to deal with them because they were even bigger than him. Holy shit. I tried to suss him out.

“What can you tell me about the neighbour?”
“She is a middle aged woman.”
“Is she in good shape - does she workout – look like she can handle herself in a scrap?”
“No, not particularly, she just looks like a middle aged woman.”
“Well I guess I’ll go have a talk to her then.”

A courageous heart is better than everything.

I went over and opened the door and stated authoritatively who I was and what I had come about. She broke down. I had not expected this, although I should have been a little better prepared after Jimmy’s sister. I tried to comfort her; this was not how I had envisioned it. She started to tell me how she was addicted to poker machines and poured all her money into the greedy slots. “When my husband finds out I spent all the rent and utility money on gambling he will beat me.” Oh dear, I said, by now a familiar catch phrase of mine. “He has beaten me many times before you know?” I mumbled that I didn’t know that. “I’ve tried to leave,” she continued, although I prayed she would stop, “but I’m scared. The last time he beat me I ended up in hospital.” “Can I call someone or take you somewhere?” I offered. “No, I don’t want trouble; I just need some money to pay the bills.” I went through my wallet and gave her my last $17.45.

I wandered back to the buff Christian’s place and he asked me how it went. I told him I gave her seventeen dollars and forty-five cents. He nodded a bit, looked thoughtful and then confused.

Oh well, a confused heart is more common than anything.

One of my few remaining friends is moving abroad for love. To celebrate Dandy’s departure we went out to dinner. It was a lovely evening, made even better by the fact that I had a buy one meal get one meal free voucher. Needless to say, Dandy would be buying one meal and T-Bone would be getting one free meal. As it turned out a free meal was not all I got.

While we were eating an arm reached over from behind me and tossed a beer coaster right in front of me. I glanced up to see what I then thought was a waitress moving quickly away. I thought it a tad rude, but quickly turned my attention back to my free meal.

Dandy asked me what it was the woman dropped. I told him it was just some coaster the waitress dropped on the table. He said, “Nah dude, she wasn’t a waitress, I saw her sitting at that table over there before.” He also added that he saw her looking over this way. I picked up the coaster and inspected it. On one side was the usual beer advertisement, but on the other there was a note written in pen.

It said, and I quote, “I have never done anything like this before, but I like the look of you and if you would like to give me a call then my number is 555 555 555.” Obviously, I have changed the number, but the rest is exactly as it was written. I am certain of this because I still have the coaster right here before me.

Feelings of excitement started to mingle with the old familiar feeling of fear. I read it out to my friend in a slow deliberate and shock-filled voice. “Oh, dude you are in” said Dandy. “Really?” a still disbelieving T-Bone responded.

“Fuck yeah” said Dandy.
“What should I do?”
“Jesus T, call her and ask her for a root.”
“Really?”
“Fuck yeah.”
“But I am not that kind of guy.”
“A guy that fucks women?”
“Yeah – well, no – well, yeah – but not because I’m gay – just because I am a coward.”
“Just send her a text message then.”

Now this was a suggestion right up my cowardly lane.

Dandy had a pretty impressive track record with the ladies. I have never gotten over the time Dandy told me how he drunkenly sent a text message to his apartment neighbour that said, “sex?” which resulted in them having rumpy pumpy for the next four years.

Of course, I couldn’t send a message that said sex, but surely I could send one that said something a bit less direct? Something like, “are you sure you have the right person?” After talking it over with Dandy we went for, “Thx 4 ur msg. Wd b gr8 2 gtg. No a gr8 plc. Hope 2 c u L8R. BCNU ;-)”. I wasn’t sure if this was the right approach. Mostly because I didn’t know what in buggery it said, but Dandy assured me it was tasteful.

Almost immediately I got a reply – she was going to be at a club in half an hour. Things were moving fast and nothing faster than my racing heart. A woman wanted to meet me.

A. Woman. Wanted. To. Meet. Me.

This was unchartered territory for T-Bone. Why on earth did she want to meet me? I’m nobody. What was wrong with her?

It is perhaps indicative of how desperate I am right now, but I hadn’t even wondered what she was like. I asked Dandy if he had gotten a good look at her. Dandy said he’d checked her out when she was sitting in the café and she was quite hot. “Quite hot?” I queried. “Really hot,” he reassured me.

A really hot woman was interested in me.

Finally.

I had waited all my life for this to happen. All my days I have wanted one woman, just one woman, or maybe even just one man who looked a bit like a woman, to see me as special. Women have never picked me when they have had options. Sure, a few drunken women had settled on me, but it was inhibition and impaired judgement that had decided it. Even with the few girlfriends I have had, I always got the feeling they were just hanging on to me until something better came along. It never usually took long.

But not this time.

This woman had chosen me out of a crowded café and decided that I was worth taking a chance on. I was the special one, I was the chosen one, I was the man for her. But why? Did she find me attractive? Did she like the way I ate? Did she see my two-for-one coupon and become aroused by my economic frugality? Has she been reading my blog and stalking me and secretly wanting to be with a great writer? And then realised that Dan Brown is married and settled on me?

It didn’t seem very likely. Maybe, more likely, she was a con artist and saw me as an ‘easy mark’. Maybe she was going to lure me into a dark alley and steal my wallet. I wondered if she would pash me first. Maybe she was a serial killer. Maybe she had been horribly fucked over by a man, maybe her daddy had abused her, and now she wanted to wreck vengeance on all men. I wondered if she would pash me first.

I had to get out of my own head. I asked Dandy what he thought.

“Nah man, she’s not dangerous, she just has poor taste. She thinks you could be that someone special.”

Maybe I was special. Oh shit, maybe she thought I was “special needs” special. You know, like retarded or something. My big head is slightly mongoloidish. But what would that matter anyway, so long as she liked me? Why was she attracted to special needs T-Bone? Oh shit, what if she was special needs too? I couldn’t handle that.

The truth is I am really prejudiced and superficial and uncomfortable with any abnormality – other than my own. I am also a liar and a hypocrite and I could never admit this to her. So if she did turn out to be retarded I would have to stay with her forever to prove that I was a good guy even though I am a complete cunt. I guess I could still get a pash.

I had to get back out of my warped head again. I asked Dandy for advice. “T-bone,” he said weightily, “if there is one thing I have learned in all my years of dating women, it is never buy them a vibrator bigger than your own penis.”

Jesus, I’d never even thought of that. Where could you even buy a vibrator at this time of night? Could I really turn up with a mini-vibrator to meet a retarded girl with poor taste in men? No, I had to trust my instinct and think that Dandy’s advice was, although undoubtedly wise, completely irrelevant to my present situation. In any case we only had just enough time to get to the club for my rendezvous.

We arrived at the club and I asked my wingman (I’ve never had a wingman before!) to keep his eyes peeled since I had only caught a glimpse of her as she left the cafe. I went off and got a couple of whiskey shots for courage. When I returned Dandy was chatting away to a couple of blondes. I gave him a glare and he pulled a ‘what face’ and I flashed him the coaster and he nodded his head over toward a table where a lovely looking girl was looking at us.

I took a deep breath and wandered over. I said, “Hi, I’m T.” She said, “Hi, I’m Abbey.” That’s a pretty hot name I thought. I couldn’t think of much to say. She remained quiet.

“Thanks for leaving that coaster on my table,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, “that was meant for your friend.”
“Oh.”
“I was embarrassed and dropped it hastily. I didn’t mean for you to get it. I’m really sorry.”
“No worries.”

I said, “no worries,” really jocularly, like my heart being torn out and devoured by wild dogs was just the funniest joke ever.

I wandered back to Dandy and told him that it was all a mistake.

“What do you mean a mistake?” he asked.
“She meant it for you.”
“What?”
“The coaster - with the message – it was meant for you.”
“Awesome!”
“What are you going to do?”
“I am going to ask her for a fuck.”

He bumped past me, spilling a portion of his drink down my shirt in his haste to get to her. He spoke to her briefly and they started making their way out of the club. I tried to call to him and tell him I didn’t have enough money for a cab and would they mind splitting one. They didn’t hear me.

As I walked home – alone - in the rain – I wondered if this meant Dandy’s overseas move was off. If so, do I have the right to ask him to reimburse me for the going away dinner I never paid for?