not a turtle

the little things you do together

Dear Blog,

So, look. I never promised I'd write you often (or maybe I did, I can't remember). You and me, we've been through a lot together. 

We've made it through eight jobs (four of which lasted less than two weeks), three and a half boyfriends (one of whom faked a terminal illness), one interstate relocation, two Prime-ministers (one of whom owes me $900), two hundred and forty two posts, and according to my internet banking transaction search function, seventy eight takeaway pizzas.

It's been three years, seven months and fifteen days since we got together, Blog. We've been together for 14.43% of my time on this planet thus far. That is (according to The Guardian) longer than the average person spends on the toilet in their lifetime.

Do you remember that time we wrote about the girl who stole my scissors in primary school and called her a crack whore? And how the very next day she friend-requested me on Facebook? Yeah, that was fun.

So you might be reading this and thinking it sounds suspiciously like one of those tacky breakup letters. It's not you, it's not me, it's just that I can't stand that shampoo you use. That sort of thing. 

Well, it's not. I came here to tell you, after a trial separation that's lasted eight months and twenty four days, I'm ready to give things another go. 

I'm not saying I'll be around every morning with steaming hot coffee and an almond croissant to gently rouse you from your cyber slumber, I'm just saying I think we should hang out more.

I've even left myself a reminder, carefully affixed to the bottom of my monitor at work:

Yours sincerely,

Byron

in which he writes a letter

Dear Internet,

It's been an awfully long time since I wrote you last. 68 days, 14 hours, 51 minutes and 36 seconds, to be precise. I don't have much to say in my defense, but over the coming weeks and months I hope to make it up to you in some small way.

The world is a very different place to the one I left you with on the sixteenth of November. Many wonderful, not-so-wonderful and interesting things have happened since:

• Our antediluvian moth eaten mold magnet of a (former) Prime Minister and his retrogressive and downright offensive cronies were ousted in the very first Federal Election I have voted in.   

• I started my new job, but you already knew that. It's going swimmingly, and I no longer dread going to work.

• Björk attacked a photographer at Auckland International Airport. Mathematicians have now calculated that Björk can statistically be expected to attack a photographer once every 10.62 years.

• A half dressed, Lynx-scented blonde child by the name of Corey Worthington Delaney threw a party to which around five hundred other half dressed, Lynx-scented children came. Hilarity ensued and police were called. In an uncharacteristically efficient and overenthusiastic response, Victorian police sent a helicopter, several squad cars and upwards of twenty officers in riot gear. One of the children threw a bottle. Victorian Police Commissioner, Christine Nixon announced to assembled media the following day that, despite the lack of any legal or legislative provision allowing her to do so, she intended to bill Mr Delaney's parents for the $20,000 she believes the police operation cost. In the ensuing media furore, nobody pays any attention to Christine Nixon's astonishing claims that she can simply invoice people for the policing of the state. Within a week, everyone has forgotten Mr Delaney's name.

• Celebrities kept dying (Brad Renfro, Heath Ledger, Suzanne Pleshette). Not the ones I expected might (Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears, Nick Nolte). Although I'm not a fan of Heath Ledger, his death affected me more than I could have imagined it might. I was a little too young when River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain died to understand why people were as devastated as they were. Now, it makes sense. I suppose these things remind us of our own mortality, and he was only five years older than I am right now.

So as you can see, the world has been busy carrying on its business, and I've been busy with an array of mundane tasks and endeavours.

I promise to write again soon.

All my love,

Byron

and still, he stays

As we are leaving the house to walk to the supermarket:

"What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"No really, what are you doing? What are those in your hand?"
"Socks."
"Socks?"
"Yes. I plan to put them on."
"But you're... currently wearing shoes."
"Yes. What is your question?"

at the lye-berry

In four weeks' time, I will start work here¹.

No longer will I spend my days lamenting my work-day contribution to the ruination of society. There will be no more attempts to defend the highly offensive (and completely indefensible) practices of my manager and the HR department of the immeasurably odious corporation by which I am currently employed.

Also, this means a great (and severely clichéd) weight has lifted from my shoulders.

Blogposts will be forthcoming. Often.

      1. No, I am not now, nor will I ever be, a librarian.

            

the great scissor war of 1994

Somebody took my scissors. I left them right here on my desk. There are scissors in every drawer in the building, and a massively overstocked stationery storeroom, yet somebody saw fit to steal mine.

If only they knew what happens to scissor stealers.

One afternoon when I was in grade five, Emma Jenkins stole my scissors. They were those awesome multicoloured scissors with a pencil sharpener built into the handle. Everyone thought they were most excellent. Anyway, Emma "scissor stealing crackwhore" Jenkins decided that they were now hers. This may have had something to do with me stealing her pen a few weeks earlier but I DON'T CARE because EMMA JENKINS IS A BITCH. I took my scissors back from her and she started crying. Not just ordinary little-girl tears, but wailing as though I had just run over her cat, melted down all of her My Little Ponies and decapitated her mother. In that order.

Needless to say, this attracted the attention of Mr Pinelli, our teacher, who rather aggresively informed me that if I didn't immediately hand him the scissors, my thus far uneventful primary school education would come to a swift and speedy end. I saw red. I watched as my fingers tightened around the cold, closed blades of "Emma's scissors", my arm raising itself higher, my wrist flicking backward and the scissors flying out of my hand in the direction of Mr Pinelli. That's right, folks. I THREW MY SCISSORS AT THE TEACHER. 

There was no injury. They were plastic scissors with tiny metal blades on the inside. They landed in his crotch. This was the first (but most certainly not the last) time a teacher swore at me. He only said "bullshit", and the end of the word kind of drifted off into a cough once he realised what was coming out of his mouth, but still. Not only had I thrown scissors at the teacher, I had made him swear. My classmates stared blankly at me, unable to decide if what I'd done was something they were supposed to laugh at, mumble quietly about, or gasp over.

After the immediate public shame, caused not by the scissor throwing itself but by being forced to collect them from where they had landed in the teacher's crotch, punishment was handed down. I got a wednesday afternoon detention, and Emma Jenkins got my scissors.

The story does end happily, however.

Later in the week, Mr Pinelli discovered that on the underside of the scissors that nearly damaged his precious pleat-fronted khaki shorts, MY NAME was written in permanent marker. MY NAME, lovingly written there by my mother, who had bought me the scissors.

I got my scissors back, and Emma Jenkins GREW UP TO BE A HOMELESS CRACKWHORE AND HAVE A CRACKBABY*

* not necessarily true

it's one of those "OH HI. I REMEMBERZ I HAS A BLOG" posts...

The desperation is over (sort of).

I started a new job this week. It sucks a lot, and I'm still going to interviews, but this means things will get better.

More soon.

the one in which he is unemployed...

After more than four months of looking, I still don't have a job.  You might remember the awful call centre job I mentioned a post or two ago. On the last day of our three week "training", I walked in to find out that I no longer had a job. To cut a long and tedious story down significantly, they had ended up with more staff than they could fit in the building and needed to shrink our group of twenty down to a group of twelve. They picked eight names from a hat. Mine was one of them.

Disgustingly unacceptable HR practices aside, this means I am in the shit.

Interview after interview, I sell myself like a madman. I've got it down to an art. Nothing can throw me. I even have the perfect answer to the "What do you think your biggest fault is?" question.

Still nothing. The way I figure it is this - I'm not getting the entry-level call centre jobs because they think I'm overqualified and only there to pay the bills while I look for something better. I'm not getting the mid-range admin / customer service / call centre roles because I don't have "relevant tertiary qualifications and/or five years industry experience", and I'm not getting the arts admin jobs because although I've got the experience, I don't have a fucking arts degree.

Can somebody please tell me why three years of sleeping in lecture theatres, crying in the park and drinking coffee while wearing a berét would better equip me for any of the jobs I've been passed over for?

To top all of this off, today I found out why my former employer (Which bank?) is so reluctant to re-hire me. It turns out that my former supervisor has been sabotaging me. Even though I thought we left things on good terms, and he assure me that anyone calling him for a reference check would hear wonderful things, the filthy little cunt mean evil man has been saying rotten awful things about me.

Honestly, I've never been so fucking miserable. I'm completely broke, I'm tired and I've had enough. Every time I walk into a room with some moronic recruitment consultant or hiring manager (who is ALWAYS called Nicole or Natalie), I lose more little pieces of what dignity I have left. Melodramatic? Perhaps, but you try sitting opposite a smiling simpleton and telling them why you would be the best person to flog health insurance to the frail elderly. 

I know this post is a load of self indulgent rubbish, but I don't feel like writing anything at all, so this is the best I can do.

people watching...

For the last four days I have been sitting in a classroom with a strange group of people who are all lacking interpersonal skills and/or common sense and/or intelligence.

After almost two months of job interviews and three months of job hunting during which I applied for over two hundred jobs, the point came where I had to take the first thing that came along in order to keep food on the table. Consequently, I am now in "training" for an unendingly tedious call centre role answering the phones for a major telecommunications provider. What I've learnt since we started on Tuesday could be summarised in a short paragraph, and it wouldn't even need a whole lot of punctuation. It's all unbelievably simple, which for me is completely frustrating, yet for others it seems to be a major intellectual undertaking. To give you some idea of just how depressingly simple my classmates are - I had to explain voicemail to two people. Nothing intricate, just the basic concept, much like an answering machine. I kid you not.

Among the over made-up girls with hair extensions, english backpackers, girls whose voices are louder and more jarring than is ever necessary, kiwi refugees in need of sunlight and seventeen year old former hairdressing apprentices, there are two supremely interesting (read: mildly upsetting) people. The first of which we will call Loretta.

Why Loretta? Well, if any of you have ever seen Moonstruck, that's who she looks like. Cher's character at the beginning of the film. She has butt length curly hair which is always in a ponytail. Not an ordinary ponytail, mind you, but one of those awful ponytails that starts at the very base of the neck. (There should actually be a word for this horrifying hairstyle. If you feel compelled to invent a term, let me know.) She wears massively oversized jerseys and/or shirts, always two - layered one on top of the other and every day so far has come to work in what I would describe as MC Hammer-esque billowing black pants, constructed of something halfway between velour and crushed velvet, which are elasticised about two inches above the ankle. The ensemble is rounded out with brown suede moccasins.

Loretta isn't new like the rest of us - she's doing a refresher course because she's been on maternity leave for the last six months or so. Strangely, she rarely mentions the baby that recently ended it's extended stay at Casa Del Utero, and never by name. The closest she's come is a vague expression of interest in becoming pregnant again "...yeah I wanna save up and stuff, so I can like, maybe get another baby. Haha." Oh, and the "Haha", that happens at the end of every sentence she says. More disturbing than her travel plans "I don't really ever wanna leave Australia, but if I did I'd go to London so I can go to Madame Tussaud's and have my photo taken with all the celebrities. That's the only thing I really wanna do that I can't do here." or her powers of perception "...yeah those people on The Biggest Loser are gross. They weigh, like, three hundred kilos. That's like twenty times more than me." is that one little sentence about her future childbearing ambition. She wants to "get" another baby. Does she have some secret connection to Angelina Jolie? Can she just "get" babies like our favourite maniacal angular-browed U.N. ambassador?

Still, despite her depressing mundanity (which The American Heritage Dictionary tells me is actually a word. Whodathunk.) she makes for good people watching. This is an important thing in a classroom where there is no proper teaching being done, nor any actual learning.

The second of these sad but fascinating people, we'll call Barry. Not his name, but fitting. His actual name is also kinda truck driver-ish, which really doesn't suit him at all.

Barry is short. Really short. His arms are not quite long enough for his body, and he's reasonably rotund. He has below shoulder length curly hair which is always gelled into a high ponytail or a bun, and sashays about the room as though he's Tyra Banks. He's the kind of person that introduces himself thusly "HI! I'm Barry! OmigodIloveyourshoestheyaresohottIamsojealous! Fierce! *finger snap* Oh... and I'm GAY. I hope you don't have a problem with that."

Barry is the kind of guy that brings on this guilty sense of shame somewhere deep inside me. I can't stand him. For me, there's being gay, and then there's this. This bizarre set of behaviours adopted by some of my own people. Personally I don't understand the appeal of talking only about makeup, wigs, boys, dance music and how slutty everyone else is. I don't understand why an ability to walk in heels is like some kind of honour badge for gay men. I can run in heels. I can pirouette and jump off a table in heels (I played Angel in an excerpt from Rent once), but you don't see me trumpeting this all over the place like it's some sort of monumental achievement.

One of the first questions the girls in the training group asked him after they found out he was gay (They asked. Not sure why. Blind and deaf people could tell at a distance of thirty paces.) was "Do you dress up?" Now, if someone asked me that question, I probably would have looked at them blankly and asked what they meant. Not Barry. He was in his element. What followed was a bizarre description of his "artform" as he liked to call it. Barry is "really into boob tubes... they're hott" and "...only use[s] MAC Makeup. Everything else clogs your pores, honey!". 

Barry is a "drag queen", or so he says. I think the reality of it is that he often goes out looking like a tranny hooker and makes a lot of noise. There's a difference. I know. I dated a professional drag queen for more than a year - it's a world I know well. In the biz, they like to call what Barry does "Skank-Tranny-Drag".

So. What I don't understand is - why do these men develop obsessions with all things female? Why the silly affected sweetie-darling voice? Why the hip swinging walk? Why the constant bitching? Why the cutting comebacks to everything that just aren't funny? Why the obsession with frocks and shoes? Is there nothing about the world that exists outside of the time they spend dressed as a woman that interests them at all? What's really kinda sad is that for a lot of these guys, that's true. For whatever reason, they prefer their escape into the glamourous "female" world they've created. It's easier to deal with than mundane everyday life. I've met hundreds of them. Sometimes, they come to their senses. Other times, they don't. Some of them end up miserable wrinkled old men in sequinned dresses and plastic heels, box-stepping as they mime to Dusty Springfield before they finally realise that there's more to life than tits and tiaras.

What I understand even less... is the obsessive interest a lot of women take in these men. The girls on my table today spent just over an hour asking Barry what foundation, eyeliner and lip gloss they should be using. What would he know? He just a short stumpy little man who cross dresses at the weekend. Why do they expect him to know? Do they want to look like drag queens?

What occurred to me as I listened to their conversation this afternoon was that to the girls, Barry is a novelty. Just like the latest toy - they don't ask him any particularly personal questions, and they don't seem to see him as anything more substantial or enriching than the latest issue of Cleo.  So at work, he's a toy. A place to go for fashion tips.

I did drag once (outside of a theatrical role). For one bizarre evening, I was Geneva Convention.
The strangest thing about being in drag is the way people look at you. All of a sudden you're a celebrity. Everybody wants to talk to you. Those who don't just stare at you from across the room. In all honesty it made me really uncomfortable. I guess I don't have a glamourous diva inside me busting to get out. I'm pretty happy with who I am, and I definitely don't want to hide it behind three shades of paintstick makeup and a set of false lashes.

Not so for some. At home, when he looks in the mirror, I'm guessing Barry sees only Roshawnda (his drag name of choice) looking back at him. These men tolerate the rigmarole of everyday life, just so that they can get home, put on their wig and heels and head off to a noisy smoky club where people will spend the evening telling them they look fabulous and showering them with affection. Things that just don't happen for them in the real world. I can see how you lose yourself. After a while the man you started out as simply doesn't exist.

These, my children, are the days of our lives.

in which he breaks things... or... is there life after high school?

I was walking through the cosmetics floor of David Jones today. The very place I have avoided like the plague for just over a year. How thoroughly homosexual of me, you might think. Not really. It was just the only thing between me and the exit doors. Now, why am I so opposed to the fluorescent loveliness of Lancôme, Estée Lauder and Laura Mercier, you may ask...?

Picture this. Early December, 2005, the Chanel counter at David Jones. I'm standing idly by as Dion (my ex) has a earth shatteringly banal conversation with a wildly gesticulating, foundation slathered bleach blonde acquaintance of his whose name I can't remember. Let's call him Jai... or Kai... or Nik. (Am I the only one to have noticed the prevalence of three letter names amongst the Retail Gays?).

Now, you may have noticed that people watching is one of my favourite things. When I see someone with interesting mannerisms or gestures, or a quirky voice, I try to memorise what I see... and some of the time that means quietly turning around and imitating the gesture, walk or movement that brings me joy, so that I can store it away and amuse myself and others with it later. This is what I was doing - innocently indulging my kinesic fascination, not bothering anyone, trying to commit Jai/Kai/Nik's lively effeminate wrist wobbling to memory for later use. How was I to know there was a two litre (seemed like) bottle of Chanel No. 5 that my forearm was headed straight for? All of a sudden there was a slippery yellow ocean full of tiny glass shards at my feet. I stand still and hope that if I close my eyes I'll suddenly become invisible and nobody will know it was me. I didn't make $189.95 worth of perfume explode all over the pristine white terazzo.

So. I am standing there looking as though I've just urinated all over a pile of broken glass on the floor, and Dion looks at me as though I've done just that. There are four women (who, judging by the amount of hairspray they have collectively applied to their Bronwyn Bishop-esque coiffes, may singlehandedly have caused the hole in the ozone layer) behind the counter shaking their heads. One of them is on the phone. I'm not sure if she's calling security, or a cleaner. I can't imagine they'd break out the mop and bucket themselves, what with their two inch long french manicured nails, so I decide it's the latter. This makes me less nervous. Jai/Kai/Nik looks as though he may need a change of underwear. I watch as the sweat beading on his forehead makes his foundation start to melt. Suddenly, Dion grabs my arm and pulls me in the direction of the door. Clearly we are making a quick getaway. This would be fine, if I wasn't standing in an oil slick, wearing thongs. As he pulls me toward the exit, I fall. To those watching, it probably looked as though someone asked me to drop and give them fifty. I land on both hands, just outside the treacherous floral scented pool. Dion still has hold of my arm, and yanks me across the floor, during which time I managed to stand and half run, half slide across the tiles and out the enormous glass doors. For some reason, even though nobody is in pursuit, we run for almost two blocks.

Back at the beginning, earlier today, I'm still walking across the floor toward the exit. As I pass the Chanel counter, I keep my eyes fixed on the door. "Hey! Byron!" a voice calls out, and suddenly I feel as though I've swallowed an anvil. Not only have they caught me returning to the scene of the crime, but they know my name. I'm in the shit now. Or am I? I turn around and the knot in my stomach unties itself. It's Dana, a girl I went to school with. She works.... here?

Dana and I had a love-hate relationship throughout year nine. Actually it was more like loathe-hate. Dana would walk up to me and growl "YOU DISGUST ME!" in my ear at every opportunity she had. I harbored a silent desire to rip her pigtails from her scalp. With an electric mixer.

This all changed one rainy afternoon. The one thing Dana and had in common was zero tolerance for Mr Jackson, our perpetually mumbling, possibly alcoholic science teacher. For some reason, we had ended up sitting next to eachother. Dana pointed out that something Mr Jackson had explained to the class didn't make any sense at all, and was quite possibly wrong. I chimed in and backed up her point, which I regretted instantly. She turned and told me to "keep my disgusting mouth closed". I had had enough. I grabbed a green texta from my pencil case and swiped it across her face and told her if she was going to be a vile bitch she may as well look like one. I don't remember exactly what happened next, but I do remember us both being thrown out of class for drawing on eachother's faces. Dana and I became friends during that episode of violent technicolor facial vandalism, and remained that way.

Dana was the kind of girl that wore insanely bright colors, and put her hair in pigtails simply because it amused her. I remember a group of year seven girls making fun of Dana's pigtails while we were waiting in line one lunchtime. Dana took her pigtails out, and arranged her hair into a hideous Punky-Brewster-esque ponytail on top of her head, turned to the teen plastics and said "Now you have something to make fun of, you creepy little witches".

We ended up terrorising anyone who stood in front of us long enough. Later, when we both left school in year ten (and both went back to different schools the following year) we ended up catching the bus to work together every day. Dana ran off to Japan for a year, and we lost touch.

So here I was earlier today, standing in front of Dana, my insane-crazy-ridiculous-funny high school best friend. Only it was different. I'd often thought about catching up with her, but I had no email address, no phone number... nothing. Dana, who I thought would have started her own political party (or perhaps terrorist cell) by now. Dana, who wanted to move to Japan for good and teach English while spending all her money on ridiculous harajuku fashions.

Dana, who in actual reality dropped out of uni, got engaged and moved to Kogarah (possibly the dullest place on earth, for the non-sydneysiders in the audience) and got a job selling perfume. She has The Dead Eyes.  There was no spark there, nothing going on behind The Dead Eyes. One more victim of suburbia. She'll get married, have children, buy things from Fantastic Furniture. Maybe that's what she wants. Maybe she's happy. I don't know. All I know is that she's not the person I knew anymore.

So this all leads to a point. I will never have The Dead Eyes. I will never lose sight of my goals. I refuse to become a victim of suburbia. Yes, I may have purchased a dining set from Fantastic Furniture, but only because it was cheap, lovely, and matched the other furniture. I guess this is as close to a new year's resolution as I'm getting this year. We will not call it that, though, or I won't keep it. Here's to a year of not becoming a mindless zombie.

Oh, and the thongs I had on that day in David Jones... they still smell like Chanel No. 5.

just don't read this post. it's boring self indulgent shite...

D'you remember how I was excited about having packed two boxes.

I haven't packed anything else. I don't want to.
Can't be bothered.

Apart from condensing my entire existence into boxes, I am also supposed to be eating properly. This is not happening.

For example:

What I Lovingly Prepared And Took To Work For Lunch (And Is Still In The Lunchroom Fridge):

Chicken and salad

What I Ate For Lunch:

Spinach & Ricotta Tortellini (which I may or may not have eaten with garlic bread)
Half of Julia's chocolate that she kept waving under my nose

See! I am disciplined! I am moving forward!

Why should I care?, you might ask.

You shouldn't. But let me be a self indulgent vain homosexual person for just a short moment. I am fat. When I say fat, I don't mean the kind of fat that boys in midriff Kylie Minogue t-shirts think is fat, I mean fat. It's incredibly unnerving to find out you weigh 14kg more than you thought you did.

There's a process you go through. You walk gingerly toward the mirror and look at what stares back at you.

Fuck. I do not look like that. How can I not have noticed? Why did nobody tell me? (Ok. My mother has been telling me, but she always thinks I'm fat.)

This is why I've gone back to running for an hour before dinner every night. This is why I plan not to eat carbs or sugar for the next thirty years or so (the Atkins diet is SO REVOLTING).

This is fucking bullshit. Somewhere there's a pill that makes you thin overnight. You know that shit exists. It's in a US government vault, somewhere between the cures for cancer and AIDS, the ridiculously efficient car that runs only on air and the cage they're keeping Debbie Gibson in.

This is the one and only time I will moan about my weight. People who blog about their struggle to lose weight/their cankles/their cottage cheese ass are usually unendingly dull. I will spare you.

I'm off to bed. I will not go via the refridgerator. I will brush my teeth, wash my face and go to sleep. Then in the morning, I will go for a run before having a nutritious [carb free, sugar free, taste free] breakfast.

Yeah...

Right.