sebastianflyte8

(Stream of consciousness grammatically innovative magical extract from Julian's diary)


On Wednesday night I went to Katie's house for dinner. It was all interesting. I felt so nervous and awkward at the door (general chit chat- how should I kiss? "I tried to ring the doorbell at first but then i decided to knock- I thought, I don't really know of any houses where the doorbell actually works!!")

I brought this wine, it's nothing, it was cheap.

Katie's housemates, Steph and Vanessa, are quite whacky and it really is refreshing. I also met James, the guy whose piano I hope to start playing from time to time. It was a decent night. I got quite drunk. We all did. The wine kept coming. I smirked in the same way that you would if a friend threw something at you playfully and you were pretending to ignore it, and thought that the glass might have filled itself while I was not looking; that fate was facilitating all this merriment.

We joked about how i might dress for the upcoming house party of theirs- the mock wedding party- I could go as the mother of the bride, I said, furious about something, spitting on a tissue and rubbing it on someone's cheek. I could wear a hideous shimmery copper coloured leopard print blouse/suit- and a fascinator (Steph- wild, witty, all smiles- produced the outfit miraculously from a bag behind us all). I wore the fascinator, pulled down the mesh, and drank the wine, squinting.

Heads were thrown back in laughter. Cigarettes were rolled and passed around. Clever young people all knowing better and mocking bad taste.

At the end of the night I think I said to Vanessa (too creepy? Too intimate?) that I really did like her and that she made me laugh. I think she was reminding me of Anne. I expressed similar sentiments when the taxi came and they were waiting with me out the front.

Too much emphasis on how happy I think it had all made me: 'honestly, I've needed all this- thanks for such a lovely evening.'

It was all tenuous then, I could feel it. There was no room for my charm in the taxi, and I was faced with the lurking nervousness again; the dull isolation that I had been avoiding.

life plan #10

I am going to Melbourne where I will live under a bridge, with the river murmuring at me, a university degree framed and held under each arm, and my cat and my mohair rug draped across my lap.

‘I cleaned my house today’ (* it’s fairly cold out there. He looked frightened just then.)


I went to my tutorial this morning, but it was cancelled. I came home and did some cleaning. I vacuumed the hall and put a few of Luke’s things that were sitting around in the front room away so that they were less visible. I swept the floor. I remembered the times here with Luke and Chris. I imagined the blue couch and the television there in the front room, and then blinked the image away again. I thought about how ordinary things can become romantic simply because they are remembered.

Encouraged by the sight of a clean room, I tried to muster up a fierce determination to work, and went back to uni. I sat in the law library and was relieved that I was no longer anxious about what’s his name coming and tapping me on the shoulder. If he smiles, I’ll smile back. If he behaves badly, I’ll understand that he has made assumptions about what motivates me. I suppose that it was an experiment with the capacity that I have to undermine myself, as well as the ease with which one can create situations, both bad and good, with words. Obstacles add interest.

I tried to listen to my procedure lecture but was moaning after 30 minutes. I’m worried about my capacity to get through it because I’m not very focussed at all. I recited all the arguments in my head (*it’s your choice/we’re faced with choice all the time/he’ll come to understand what he should do on his own/he’s always complaining about something/much worse things are happening to people and they fuss much less). I met briefly with Clare. I had Coffee with Cindy. All this coffee with all these people all the time.

This evening, as I wandered through the rain and observed the dull yellow of the lights reflected in the puddles, I felt like I was wandering through the parts of a world that had been cleared out because of some grand emergency that I had not been told about. I was heading home again of course, but I wondered vaguely about why this should be so. I could have taken the car for a drive anywhere at all I suppose.

I feel like things have expired.

The puddles were deep. My feet really did get quite wet. That’s the problem with shoes like these. But that didn’t upset me as much as the feeling that everyone and everything had disappeared somewhere, and that I was uncertain of what it was that I should be missing.

I spent an exorbitant amount of money on a facewash yesterday at Mecca in Claremont. Admittedly I have run out of stuff, so I did need something.

The 'all natural' stuff that I got looks very wonderful but I tried it and it doesn't foam up much and I don't like that. It is probably just made of herbs and water.

Clearly I didn't learn anything from 'The Emperor's New Clothes.'

A desperate looking old lady with artificial bright orange curls and a thick broken English accent just came into work waving a bag of manadarins at me.

'Freesh, very nice' she said, while I was in the middle of serving a customer.

Some of the fresh mandarins actually have a green hue.

I recalled images from fairytales; the peddler offering the poison apple in 'Snow White', or the old hag at the door in 'Beauty and the Beast.'

Fearing that this might be some kind of grand mystical test, and that I might be transformed into something unsightly or furry if I refused, I bought the bag of mandarins from the old lady for six dollars.

I don't know if I can eat them now, in case I become unconscious forever and the prince forgets to come...

I left an umbrella on the Eiffel Tower. I wonder who has it now.

I had a conversation with my dad tonight about my career and my future and my homosexuality.

His perspective is really odd. He has this whole old generation Italian thing going on- if you don't have children then you might as well be dead.

He said that 'the type of people I will be mixing with' have no concept of responsibility or working towards something and so on because they don't have the goal of marriage and children.

'It will be harder for you....most people aren't ok with it.'

A general sense of homosexuality as a disability and so on.

'See, if you were...normal...'

By the left wing, gay arts student standard i know he is saying all the wrong things and that i could attempt to knock him down with some vague babble that i could extract from a unit reader for a unit that has a phrase for its name like, um, 'text and gender and why we minorities are alright.'

But half of me couldn't be bothered. And i wasn't sure how much of it I actually didn't believe in myself. I didn't necessarily feel the need to defend anything.

I understood how few expectations and opinions I have and I wondered when that happened to me or if I have always been like that.

And part of me was sort of excited to be arguing with him and having a conversation with him.

I have a glandular infection and have been sleeping heaps these last couple of days. Headaches, sweating, tenderness all over. Just bloody awful.

I cracked the screen to my phone so I can't see the numbers in it- so i've effectively lost all my contacts. Hopefully it won't take long to round them all up again. Some I might not be able to get my hands on though which is a bit sad.

The nurofen makes me feel good.

I stayed at mum's last night and she looked after me and gave me food and things. It felt like it used to when I was a kid and that was nice.

I feel strange and dark and isolated.

I hope I get better, because I have a big tutorial paper due at the end of the week.

watched 'The Neverending Story' here one night with Luke and I really liked that. I've put things up around uni to advertise for a housemate here and have been bombarded with phonecalls. The house will have a new member in the next month.

On Friday I spent some time with Anne and drank tea. It was nice because I hadn't seen her for a good week which is a fairly long time for us. Friday night I went to a party in Nedlands and I didn't know anyone there or like it- I left with Cindy. I drove her to the city and we went to the Hula to meet Tom. Ben was at the door and I enjoyed a chat with him. I felt quite spaced out and had a bit of a headache for some reason but I wasn't unhappy. While I was inside I felt really relaxed and actually enjoyed being sober and just watching everyone have a really good time.

Yesterday I went and had dim dum with Anne, Ben and Julie-Anne. Then we all went into the city to do some shopping and to meet Suzy. It was a great day, and although we had planned to possibly go to amplifier last night, I was far too tired to in the end.

Today I slept in very late, and worked a few hours in the book shop. Went to dad's, had a meal, played with Lara. She was the nurse and I was the doctor and we set about fixing her 'sick' pony toy with rainbow hair. Lord help me, if I had been in a worse mood I could not have dealt with it.

Latest boy is playing text message hockey with me and I just don't have the strength. As far as i'm concerned the whole thing is not meant to be an adversarial process. It's not about keeping the score. I hate it when people waste my time.

The words to Amy Mann's 'Wise up' have a lot of meaning for me at the moment.

'It's not going to stop. It's not going to stop till' you wise up.'

It's time to have a rest.

Divine comfort comes in devil red draw string pyjama shorts feauturing squirrels.

He got back not long after I had fallen asleep.

A combination of sounds: shuffling, a chuckle? (aw, look at him sleeping there- he can be all mine), the rattling of a belt, the light being turned off.

I was thrilled and filled with dread. With the heat of his naked body pressed against me in the dark, I felt as though I was being overborne by some dark and nameless figure in a nightmare.

* * *

I whispered his name but he didn't wake up. I took a moment to scan the shadows of his naked crouched body.

I thought that he looked like a sleeping child, and I wondered for a moment about his life and his mind.

Dressing myself quietly in the half dark, I picked my shoes up and made my way out.

Why did I climb the gate instead of opening it??

It felt like I was the only one in the world who was awake, and walking fairly briskly in my bare feet under the dull haze of the streetlights I felt utterly unlike myself; a diva with her silver slingbacks swinging in her grasp, biting her blood red nails at the naughtiness of it all, and contemplating another change of address.

A subtle exit. Nothing lost, nothing gained.

After the drive home I slept for only a few hours, and had dark and turbulent dreams about him being upset that I had gone.

Ok. I can't contain my rage anymore.
Fashion that doesn't appeal to me doesn't usually get on my nerves all that much.
Yes, I get slightly frustrated at the rows of girls walking together with their balloon skirt/overall skirt/bowz n buttonz/Dannii Minogueesque frippery. But these things just make me angry.

Crocs.

Hideous Swiss cheese sweat harvesting rubber slippers. It's even worse when I spot whole families wandering through the western suburbs, with each member coded or gendered in their respective colour.

They are NOT bloody trendy. They remind me of farts.

And the ones with laces???? What the fuck is with that?

I'm sorry if you own a pair. This is just my opinion, but I can no longer disguise my contempt for this foul holey rubber menace.

Two words: NO and REVOLTING.

'You have been so careful of me, that I never had a child's heart. You have trained me so well, that I never dreamed a child's dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, father, from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child's belief or a child's fear.'
-Dickens

'...and someone who likes the way I look when I get up in the morning.'

I went down to the country for my great Aunty Hazel's funeral. I never knew her really, but had heard things said about her often. My mother would talk about how she would offer her bread and butter.

On the way down the air grew colder and my mind was stilled. I felt like I was running away and that I needed to. From what? From everything I suppose. From thinking.

I loved how things got greener as we got further down. It reminded me of home. Nature offers so much, and demands nothing.

At the funeral, while the church mourned the loss off an old lady who had done all sorts of things and formed all sorts of bonds that i knew nothing about, I got lost in my imagination. I imagined the funerals of my loved ones and the eulogies I might make. I sank deeper as intimate glances and desperate and countless embraces- helloes and goodbyes- fleeted across my mind.

I remembered when my dearest friend once said to me, on the way up to Geraldton: 'you know those beautiful moments when you seem to just realise everything, and then it all falls away again???'


It took the death of a relative stranger to remined me that I would die without the ones I love.

No more pussy footing around.

And nothing makes you feel Christmasy like the sight of George Michael lamenting lost love...

'Last Christmas I gave you my heart...'

This clip is just great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06rlB0Kw3fw

Merry Christmas everyone...

Jules xx

Snippets of dialogue and goings on.

***
A rat chase.

'Gabriella get's changed about three or four times a day!!'
'Have a gorgeous Christmas.'

Surprising and unreasonable feelings of jealousy. Self-absorbed.

Nice times on Cindy's rooftop, the spa, loved ones, a magnificent view over the city.

'The Christmas tree has fallen over, there's water all over the carpet.'

Needy, but frustrated by the needy.

'you didn't see my indicator?'
'you obviously weren't looking where you were going.'
'Can we discuss this after Christmas??'

***

I need to spend some time alone and gather my thoughts about many things I think.