Back On The Bludge BACK ON THE BLUDGE BY IAN KIDD CHAPTER 1 : Virginity, Vacation, Infidelity - and Toothache! August 1995. For those of you joining late, I had just completed a 4-week "Employment Connections" course at TAFE. I had completely failed to get a job, utterly failed to win the heart of the lovely Karen, my friend Michael had completely failed to win Laura away from HER boyfriend, and I had had $60 and my wallett stolen while at Pizza Hut. And THIS, dear reader, was to be the highlight of my year. Entering August, things looked bleak. Michael had lost Laura, I had never even had Karen in such a way that I could be said to have lost her, and my employment prospects were not encouraging, to put it mildly. "What do you think of my politics?" Lorraine Rosenberg MP had asked at my job interview. "My view of your politics is irrelevant," I'd told her. "I'd be here to do a job, as an office clerk. The politics is your department, not mine." What I should have said, of course, was "When they convict a rapist, they should CASTRATE him!" Late August, and Michael was on the girl prowl again. Never one to learn by his mistakes (a former, separated single mom girlfriend ,Sarah, having turned out to be a right psycho of Glenn Close proportions), his choice this time was Erica, a 24 year old with a 3 year old child (it was getting to the stage where whenever we passed a woman with a pram, I'd point and say "There's one for you") and a (possibly deranged) estranged husband. Early September, Michael turned the big 20, and Erica had a VERY special present for him. That's right, you guessed it, Michael finally had his cherry picked. By a married woman, on his birthday. Now THAT'S class. It was mid September, that what me and my brother Richard had yearned for finally came true. A 7 week holiday back in England. Not for us, don't get me wrong, but for our PARENTS. That's correct, 7 full weeks (count 'em) without the folks. The words "Bliss" and "Heaven" would not be astray when used here. "We're going to have a big party and invite all our friends", I told Mum proudly."So that's two people coming." Michael and Erica's relationship did not last long. Erica and her husband got back together (one suspects she did not tell her husband of her sexual exploits), though Michael actually dumped HER after finding her slobbering over YET ANOTHER guy at a party! For a time, there was the possibility of something going on between Michael and Erica's sister-in-law, Naomi, although Michael (for once showing some sense) did not pursue it, due to the complications this might have caused. For one thing, imagine it from the husband's POV - Michael having both his wife AND his sister! About four weeks into the holiday (bliss, heaven etc), I started to get toothache. At first it only hurt when splashed with cold water (after brushing my teeth), but gradually it began to ache dully. At first, I ignored it but after a week or so the ache stopped being dull and became excrutiating. I couldn't take it. I was popping painkillers like a junkie, and they WEREN'T working! The solution was obvious: For the first time since I'd been in oz, I had to visit the dentist. This however, proved to be a good deal more of a political situation that one might expect. First I had to ring the local medical centre to see if I was allowed to get it paid for for free (being a dole bludger and all). I was. THEN I had to find a dentist to do it. I can't remember the man's name, but he was an absolute prick! He kept me waiting twenty minutes on the chair while he chatted to his (admittedly rather nice) young female assistant. Then he came in, and asked me where it hurt. I pointed to the exact tooth on the upper left of my mouth. He proceeded to stuff cotton wool in my mouth, numb my entire mouth so I couldn't feel what I was doing, while he went to work. Satisfied, he told me I could get up, and asked me if it still hurt. I pointed to the same tooth and said "It still hurts up here." The man blanched. I mean, he quite literally did a double-take. "Up there?" he gasped. The next day (after another agonising sleepless night) I went through the whole rigmarole again and booked a different dentist. After enduring another WEEKEND of agony (I was, quite honestly, considering shooting the tooth out) I finally went to see the new dentist, Dr Sawford. He was friendly, courteous, put me at ease and almost immediately spotted the problem and fixed it. And he only numbed my mouth slightly, unlike Dentist No1, who had numbed my mouth so completely that I was halfway down the road to my house before I found some cotton wool he had forgotten to take out of my mouth, which I had been utterly unable to feel! I could, quite possibly, have choked on it if I hadn't noticed it when I did, and had tried to swallow something. Where were the guy's eyes while he was 'fixing' my teeth, you might well ask? On his young female assistant, if you ask me. CHAPTER 2 : The House Guest On Thursdays and Fridays, Michael was at the TAFE only just up the road, so some lunchtimes, he would come down to see me, and we would walk back up to the Noarlunga Centre, talking (this had happened more often now that Laura had effectively dumped Michael). On one occasion up at the Centre, we bumped into a fat, frumpy girl with a face like a horses ass, who knew Michael. They smiled and mumbled inanities at each other for a minute, before she left. "Who was that?" I asked. "Sarah," Michael replied, shamefaced. Considering that Michael had always described Sarah as being very sexy, and, even after they'd broken up, he'd commented "I still think she's damned attractive", you might understand why I just creased up in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. I'm sorry, but after hearing all this for so long, and picturing Sarah as some alluring femme fatale, to see the decidedly frumpy real thing just cracked me up. I was giggling non-stop for the next ten or fifteen minutes. "Damned attractive," I managed to gasp, between laughing fits. Michael was ill amused. Early November, my parents returned from their 7 week English holiday. "Did you miss us?" Mum asked. "Barely noticed you'd gone," I'd replied, being deliberately glib, but with more than a hint of truthfulness. Because it HAD been fun, relaxing and peaceful. And now it wasn't. The year was almost over. As we passed into December, Michael got another girlfriend, Jenny, who he had sex with frequently - "I'll have to buy some condoms in town," Michael said. "Why?" I asked. "Why not just buy them from your local chemist?" "Oh yeah, right,' Michael nodded. "Are you kidding? My parents shop there. Just imagine it - in a week, my mother goes in there, and the chemist goes "Oh, hello. Saw your son in here last week buying condoms,"" Michael shook his head. "I don't THINK so." "Even better," I had smirked. "If you were at the counter buying them, and your mom actually came in the store." "Don't," Michael held up a hand. "Just don't even think about it" - but had dumped her after finding HER with another guy. He quickly got himself ANOTHER girlfriend, though, Felicity, otherwise known as Fee. The year was nearly over. You wouldn't think much more could happen. But the worst was yet to come. Since emigrating to Australia, I had kept in contact with many of my friends, including my oldest friend Matthew, and Andy, who had managed to get himself a 1 year stay at Sydney University. Yes, AUSTRALIA'S Sydney University. And I, in an act of - with hindsight - stupidity, had invited him to spend Christmas with us. Ten days. Nearly two weeks. It could have been delightful, an old friend staying for Xmas, having fun, reminiscing over old friends. It could have been great. It wasn't. Andy arrived in Adelaide early evening December 19, 1995. Me and my parents picked him up in our car. Before we'd even reached home, I was beginning to think I might have made a big mistake. In the car, before we'd picked him up, Mum asked "Are you looking forward to seeing him again?" I ventured a cautious "Sort of", because, in all truth, Andy had never really been a close friend. If it had been Matthew, I would have been unequivocal in my enthusiasm. But it was Andy, who had been a likeable associate, but had never really made the leap to real 'friend'. Andy, who at the time I had actually been surprised that he wanted to stay in touch and write. But at Wickersley, Andy had been okay, a slightly offbeat, but pretty smart, amusing guy. Four years, however, is a long time, and the Andy we picked up that fateful December night bore scant resemblance to the Andy I'd known at Wickersley Comprehensive School. The 'new' Andy was a long-haired, inarticulate drunken loser who made one's mind boggle as to how he got into University in the first place. By the end of the first evening, with conversation on the lines of the best pub games to play whilst pissed (one involved going up to complete strangers and saying "You're a cunt") I realised I had made a very big mistake. And I had ten more days to put up with it. We went to town. Andy had an obsession with teddy bears (!) and had to stop at absolutely every shop with one in store and stare at it for an hour (he never actually bought one, of course). It transpired he had a girlfriend, the rather ominously named Sarah, and he talked of her in such glowing terms I began to feel nauseous. They had it all planned, he told me in a sentence composed unusually of more than two words. When he had to leave Oz in January, he was coming back in July the following year to see her, she was going to go to England in October, then when he had finished Uni, he was going to marry her and thus gain permanent residence over here (God forbid!). They'd decided this, he told me in all seriousness, after they'd been dating three weeks, along with deciding how many kids they were going to have. At this point, I hadn't let my family know my feelings and was still pretending everything was fine, telling myself I could handle his company for those ten days. I was, of course, kidding myself. CHAPTER 3 : Christmas With The Mentally Impaired Did you have a turkey at Christmas? We did. And his name was Andy. Andy was not, as you may have guessed, the most stimulating of company. The closest we came to an interesting conversation was when I was asking what the people I knew at Wickersley Comprehensive School back in the UK were up to. Most of the people I knew he didn't, but I did learn that Sally, a girl I had developed an utterly unrequited (of course) crush on while in a Drama group with her in the early part of 1991, had dumped her then boyfriend Neil (an utter prat, as I recall) and was currently going out with fellow former classmate Wayne - who was an even bigger prat, and totally thick to boot! Quite what a seemingly intelligent girl like Sally would want with either of those two utter deadheads was - and remains - a complete mystery to me. Anyway. The first night, after an hour of trying to Andy and getting nothing but "Ug" back in reply, I asked him if he wanted to see anything in my (extensive, I gloat) video collection. He did, and we watched several episodes of "The Simpsons", "Red Dwarf" and "The Young Ones" - at his request, I might add. Which is where I discovered another fact about my house guest. He had no sense of humour. That is, none discernible. For someone who professed to having all series of "Red Dwarf" on tape because he loved them so much, he did not laugh ONCE. During "The Simpsons" and "The Young Ones", the only time I detected a snigger (never a laugh or a smile, always a SNIGGER - he was just that sort of person), was when Homer fell on his arse, said "D'oh!" or Vyvyan hit someone. Anything slightly more sophisticated gained no response at all. After a while, I gave up watching the episodes and started watching him. Andy sat, watching with a glazed expression on his face. Occasionally, he'd show some life, but only to rummage in his bag for a "tinnie". The evenings for the next ten days I made sure we spent playing cards. I for one did not want to spend my evenings trying to communicate with him on my own, and I certainly wasn't about to waste my videos on him. Which leads me neatly on to a famous, mocking story about Andy, that still survives today and has almost reached the level of 'urban myth'. Having found Crib, Crash and Scrabble far too sophisticated for him, Andy suggested we play a game of his choosing, which he thought far superior: Beggar Thy Neighbour. A game for children age 3 and under, none too dissimilar to "Snap". After two rounds, me, Dad and Mum couldn't take it anymore and just dissolved into mocking laughter, at which point Andy decided he'd had enough and went to annoy Richard. And I mean, ANNOY Richard. At this time, I couldn't pretend anymore. I detested him, and to my delight found everyone else in the house loathed him too, which meant we could all get together at various times and gleefully insult and make fun of him behind his back. Lots of fun, I'm sure you'll agree. What else was wrong with him? He was rude, uncouth and obsessed with beer. Various times while playing cards, he would "Fuck this", or "Fucking ay", apparently having no regard for any of the social graces or just plain no common sense. Don't get me wrong, I'm no prude and I use bad language all the time, but you DO NOT use it in front of your parents, and you certainly DO NOT use it in front of your FRIEND'S parents. Matthew knew this. Michael knew this. Anyone with any sense knows this. Andy, however, did not. To quote Michael, "How else are you going to convince them what a nice guy you are?" Precisely. Andy seemed to want everyone to know he was a wanker. And he was certainly succeeding. Most days I filled by getting up and immediately going to town, returning early evening in time for tea and cards, thus avoiding having to actually sit down and talk to the guy. Amid fantasising about saying to him "If you love Sarah so much, why don't you go back to Sydney and surprise her for Christmas?", I found he was obsessed with alcohol. Walking around the city all day I understood the need for refreshment, but not soft drinks. Oh no. BEER. And not just once, or even twice. Andy had to go in every single pub he came across. I refused to go in, making him sit outside and drink. I had better things to do than sit in smoke-filled pubs with people who had nothing better to do than get pissed at 12 o'clock in the afternoon. Andy did, by accident, introduce me to a rather nice pool hall, which I subsequently went to with Michael, which is, damningly, the nicest thing I can say about his entire visit. Friday, coming home, Andy showed some glimmering of common sense, buying some flowers for Mum to "say thank you". It was just as well. For Mum was waiting for us - him - when we got home. And she was not in a good mood. CHAPTER 4 : Naked Contempt We arrived home, to find Mum waiting, fuming. She had been cleaning my room, and had moved Andy's bag (all his crap of course being dumped on my floor) to discover, beneath it, (it hadn't even fallen out, BENEATH it!) a pornographic magazine depicting, among other things, a man holding a woman on a lead with a dog collar on her neck. The woman was of course completely naked (or so Mum said, anyway, the rest of us never got to see the magazine). When presented with this, Andy went bright red, flushed with guilt. I, of course, being completely innocent, had a merry fit of hilarious laughter at Andy's stupidity and misfortune. "You trying to tell me you didn't look at it?" Mum asked me later. "Sod off!" I replied. I hadn't, of course. I hadn't even been aware that Andy had been in possession of it, although I had seen him take a mag out of his bag into the bathroom. "Reading material", he'd called it. I'd ignored it at the time (just like I ignored most things he said), utterly failing to grasp the meaning. Now I fill up with horror at the thought of what he probably did in there. EWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!! Still, both Richard and I thought the incident highly amusing, even if Andy and Mum did not, and my barely - okay not at all - contained amusement at his 'misfortune' further strained what I laughingly call our 'friendship'. On the Thursday night, I had sent a message to my friend Michael via email, over Richard's computer, the gist of it being "HELP!" Michael duly turned up on my doorstep early Saturday morning, and after abandoning Andy and going for a quick walk, where I spilled my guts on the ordeal this 'holiday' was becoming, we went out to Pizza Hut as a trio. Me, Michael and Andy. Halfway up the street, as Andy stopped to draw money from an ATM, Michael had already made up his own mind about my visitor, giving me the famous 'wanker' hand signal. I could only nod my agreement with this verdict. Lunch was Hell, awkward silences followed by even more awkward conversations. At one point, Michael and I began talking about Laura, Sarah et al, deliberately excluding Andy from the conversation. That was the highlight of the meal. Afterwards, we debated what to do next, whether to go for a walk on the beach, or go into town. Eventually, we plumped for the former, and after 30-45 minutes of that, Michael made his excuses and went. Later, he told me he'd chosen the beach option because, if we'd gone into town, "That would have meant I'd have to spend all day with the fucker!" Quite. One good thing about Andy's visit, however, possibly the ONLY good thing, was that it did make me genuinely grateful to be able to call Michael my friend. I suppose bad times make you more grateful for what you've got, and sometimes take for granted. The situation deteriorated over Christmas, with Mum in particular increasingly critical of Andy's alcohol addiction. In the time he was here, he went through four bottles of beer per day, PLUS bourbon - and that's a conservative estimate. His never-ending use of the phrase "I'm going to vegetate" also caused much irritation and later mirth, and has passed into Kidd folklore as shorthand for the completely stupid. Christmas Day I couldn't be arsed to keep up the pretence. I was damned if I was going to spend MY Christmas Day talking to that moron. I retreated to my room, reading a book I had purchased specifically for this excuse. The book was crap, but at least it got me out of being with HIM. For his part, Andy spent the day "vegetating" half-naked in a deckchair on our yard, with a never-ending supply of beer bottles. Christmas Day, Andy started drinking around 9:00am, and didn't stop all day. Andy left around 10 o'clock in the morning December 27 1995. I informed him the day before I would not be going in the car with him and Mum and Dad to the airport, as it was very early and there wasn't much point. At this stage of the game, I think both of us knew this was it. We just weren't friends anymore. He shook my hand (I was still in bed) and departed. His last words were "I'll send you a postcard". He didn't, of course. I never heard from Andy again. And in all honesty, I can't honestly say I was terribly sad about that. After taking our food, drink, hospitality (ha!) etc, Andy left, taking his porno mag with him (Mum gave it back to him the last day of the holiday!), but, despite Dad giving him a few beers, did not return the favour, preferring to take two bottles with him on the train (illegal) rather than give them to Dad as a thank you. That was our Andy. Charming to the last. CHAPTER 5 : No Accounting For Taste Andy was gone. And so was 1995. 1996, I had decided, was going to be different. This year, I was going to DO something. 1996 was going to be the year I got my life back on track. Early December 1995, even before dear old Andy had arrived, I had browsed through various TAFE guides (inspired at least partly by my experience of TAFE life earlier in the year - see "The Course") and had decided that an Accounting course might well prove the way to go. I contacted TAFE, who informed me they wouldn't start taking enrolments until January 11 the next year. So, January 11 1996, I rang TAFE up to ask about enrolment into an Accounting course. "I'm sorry," the receptionist told me, "we're fully booked. You should have come in last year." Quenching a desire to go up to TAFE personally and strangle the bitch, I asked politely (through clenched teeth) how this could be so. "Hang on a moment," she said, "I'll put you through to our Accounting department." This she did, where the nice man THERE said "Not at all. We've plenty of places left. Get the receptionist to make an appointment for you". I then had to explain to the receptionist that there WERE places left on numerous Accounting courses. She then told me she couldn't make an appointment as the people who did interviews for the Accounting department wouldn't be available for two weeks. She told me to ring back in two weeks time. By then, I thought, all the places would be miraculously filled again. You can understand that by this time I was beginning to feel almost like Mulder in "The X Files" - that there was some kind of gigantic conspiracy against me involving absolutely everyone, all out to stop me having any kind of life at all. Anyway, while I was waiting to attempt the impossible task of getting into TAFE (getting into the Pentagon would be easier, one suspects), life was going on in other areas, as life tends to do. Michael, when not involved in an increasingly fragile on/off relationship with his current girlfriend Fee, had made a major life decision. With his TAFE traineeship over, having failed TAFE but been retained on an apparently permanent basis at his job, Michael finally had the money to do what he wanted. And what he wanted was to move away from his parents. Michael moved into a flat of his own mid January. I became a frequent visitor, our trips to town back on again - now with a decidedly snookerish feel - and then extending into trips back to his flat, where he showed me some of the things he could get on his computer using the internet, including a rather fetching shot of two luscious young lesbians on a bed. I started going down to Michael's flat QUITE A LOT. There were, however, some less than good points to Michael's move. While this meant we actually had a place where we could just slob about and natter about anything (if we tried that at my house, Mum would invariably find things to dust in the not-so-background, somewhat limiting the conversation, and I'd never even been to Michael's house, and with the stories about his parents, didn't really want to), there were some other effects, some of them only noticeable in the long term. For one thing, Michael's life appeared to be going in a completely different direction to mine. After Mawson, when we'd first become outside-school friends in early '93, we were the same. We had something in common. That's to say, we were BOTH losers. Now, Michael had a job, a string of girlfriends and a flat of his own. His own home. I, on the other hand, was apparently making a career out of unemployment, had never so much as held hands with a girl and the chances of me leaving home were, to be blunt, comical. Plus the fact that Michael now had dozens of friends. I had one. Michael. As I've said, this didn't matter at first. We still went out every week, and it didn't really matter much. But Michael's life was changing fast, and I was just one component of a busy lifestyle. Whereas I had NO lifestyle. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. The two weeks were finally up, and I secured an appointment with a TAFE advisor. My best option, he informed me, looking at his watch and clearly wanting to be somewhere else, was a four-year 'mixed' Accounting course, costing around $6000 a year. I told him I was pretty much out of options. As I walked home, I reflected on another dream gone nowhere fast, and wondered if 1996 was going to turn out just like 1995, 1994 and 1993. But no. For Mum and Dad had been re-reading that Saturday's paper, and had come across an ad for a business college, offering a choice of 2 six-month business courses ABSOLUTELY FREE, providing you passed an initial test. I was wrong. 1996 was NOT going to be just like 1995, 1994 and 1993. But in the end, I might just wish it had... TO BE CONTINUED...
Copyright © 1996 Ian Kidd |