No More Comedy

This afternoon/night I went to the last show of the year at 100% Nuts in Brunswick and had a great gig with a bunch of other crew. By some mysterious planetary alignment a bunch of random punters actually showed up all within about ten minutes of the show starting and made a decent-sized crowd for us to perform to so that was nice. Damian cut off his dreads as the opener and I bought a BLT for twelve bucks which I really shouldn't have done, but did anyway. A delightful afternoon, no matter who you ask.

What sucks now though – and I only realized this about twenty minutes ago as I was sitting at the tram stop writing a new joke that had come into my head on the quiet eleven pm walk down Victoria Parade – is that there is no more comedy for the rest of the year!!! Today was my last gig for 2012... well, my last gig of material anyway. I don't think I can accurately express how fucked that feels to all of the non-comedian daywalkers who read this blog... and I'm sure there are HORDES of you. Oh yes.

But seriously though, I now have AT LEAST two weeks with no gigs and no stage time. Where will I get validation? The situation is seriously dire, I'm shaking, my mouth is dry, I'm not looking forward to the pain. I was writing this joke and thought of a callback I can do in the middle of it that references some other shit and works really well with a joke I've been doing recently and I was getting all excited and happy with myself when I realized... holy fuck, I'm not going to get a chance to even TRY this on stage until like the first or probably more realistically, second week of January. Jesus Fuck. That's so far away, and no doubt I'm going to be writing a fucking BUNCH of material over the Christmas break, and now there's going to be a massive back-log, and the joke that I just wrote – which I am actually really happy with, and I know has legs – will possibly get lost in this massive stretch of time between today – my last gig of the year – and my first of the new year. The Kieran Butler Roast is on Wednesday, and then the stage is taken away as well. There's nothing after that until the new year is back in swing... god damn it... oh god... oh... oh... oh... I don't know what to say about this. Where to go? What can I do? Nothing is the answer, absolutely nothing.

It's cool that I've fallen so happily into comedy and am still enjoying it and have the same drive after going pretty hard at it for about six months... I would never have expected myself to become so dedicated to doing something as I have become... I really love my life here.

After the 100% Nuts gig at Bridie O'Rielly's I went with Millie, a friend from doorknocking days back in Adelaide that has spent the last five months in the outback working and has just returned to civilization, to the Comic's Lounge to catch the highly-hyped and very talked-about Dov Davidoff perform his last Melbourne gig. He was seriously good... like seriously fucking brilliant. It was weird though, I mean I watched a bit of his stuff on YouTube this week after everyone was talking about how good he is and how every comic absolutely had to get down to the Comic's Lounge and catch him. Normally I take the advice on seeing shows that those guys give out with a grain of salt because I know they like to get butts on seats and will oversell comics to do it... but the amount of raving that went around about this guy was next fucking level, so I thought I'd better get down. It ended up being a coin-toss that decided it, but still, we went down and got in with some free tickets I had buried at the bottom of my bag.

The stuff I'd seen on YouTube hadn't excited me too much, because it seemed to be mostly pandering towards the kind of mass-appeal audience demographic that has produced half of the outstandingly adequate Comedy Central specials of recent times... this guy just seemed like another mildly talented US comedian talking about work, sex and his silly parents. After a few of the jokes that I recognized from the YouTube stuff though he got into some political gear and some other really interesting personal stuff, and I liked the direction he was taking a lot to be honest, I really enjoyed the second half of his set. I mean, I was always going to enjoy it, it was never going to be a bad set or anything. I am under no delusions about sub-standard comedians making it onto Comedy Central or anything like that – I know it requires a massive level of talent to get that far and so to see a guy who has had an hour special perform live is always going to be a captivating and ultimately funny experience, but I wasn't expecting anything too interesting other than a few clever punchlines and charismatically delivered dick jokes.

He started on the introspection though and I really started listening... the lame thing was though, and it was clear that he could feel it too, as soon as he started down on the stuff that was really interesting and actually felt like it was going somewhere new, the audience stopped digging it. At the start of his set, Dov made a few jokes about girl's tits and the first black guy that ever fucked a white girl saying 'look what I found'... that kind of predictable shit. The audience ATE IT UP. They fucking LOVED it, and I let out a small chuckle. But later on when it got a little more challenging, you could feel people switching off. Are we so impatient and stupid as a society that we need any original ideas to be so carefully couched and presented on a silver platter between easily-digestible sex jokes? Has comedy really been reduced to how many laughs we can get per minute? Is that what we want our art form to become? It really worried me to watch this comic who clearly knew what he was doing go up on stage, kill it with dumb material, and then lose his audience with the clever stuff, because it made me think: if this guy can't grab them, then what fucking chance do any of us have?

I went into the gig sceptical about the quality of the comic I was going to see, and expecting a wry smile and a shrug of the shoulders. I came out having realized that the comedians are not the problem, the audiences are – we are, every time we decide to go for safe, sensible vanilla instead of stretching ourselves and giving someone the opportunity to challenge us. That's a scary thought guys, because I don't want to be listening to dick jokes for the rest of my life, and I sure as fuck don't want to be telling them either.

Peace, Taco.

The Last Two Weeks of the Year

One thing that really annoys me about word processing programs is the way that they have developed to be so complex that half of the subtle formatting options seem to auto-adjust, and arbitrarily change without warning. When I write my blog, I write each entry on a new page in the same document, and the formatting is always the same: date, double space, then start writing. Lately though, pressing enter in this particular document has started making a wider space than before, and so I've had to start using shift+enter to make my line breaks instead of just pressing enter. I know it's not a big deal, definitely nothing to hunger strike over, but it's a part of my life, and if I don't say something, who will?

I've been thinking about this drinking thing next year again – I feel like the pressure is really on now, because on one hand, this year has been the most productive year ever and I know that a lot of that is down to the fact that I haven't been drinking much. Based on that argument alone, I should continue with my fifty-two days of drinking a year in 2013. On the other hand, though, not drinking this year has taught me valuable lessons and I've developed the ability to say no, and refrain from over-indulging in my favourite vice. I think maybe I've even tempered my previously fawning reverence for liquor, and if I were to go back to not having self-imposed limits on my alcohol intake, I think I could employ these lessons myself. I just want to recapture a bit of spontaneity in my life instead of having to plan every outing like a prison break. Lame.

My alarm just went off: I have two alarms set every day – one at ten-forty am that says 'Write', and one at five-twenty pm that says 'Write you lazy fuck!' – and then there are the other ones reminding me to pay rent, call people, be awake or do my washing. My life is so ordered, or rather, I try so hard to make it ordered. But for every alarm that goes off, my threshold for ignoring these reminders increases, thus making me all the less likely to take notice of any URGENT NOTICE that I might have given myself for that day.

Fuck I hate this double enter thing.

The Kieran Butler Roast is coming up on Wednesday, and also, ding ding, ta-da ta-da, Rachel, my absentee girlfriend is flying back into Melbourne from places afar on Tuesday. Then on Thursday morning I'll be grabbing my dirty hobo mitts around a couple of mushroom caps and valiums for the ten-hour bus ride to Adelaide – The Christmas Party awaits. My good friend Rouse's twenty-second birthday is on Friday and against the odds he's made it this far without getting his ass locked up so we're off to celebrate in style by attending the same club that those fuckers smash their heads at every week. That sounds sarcastic, like I'm not excited, but really I am... next weekend is going to be sick.

So also tomorrow (Sunday) I've got a spot at 100% Nuts in Brunswick which should be a lot of fun, and I'm catching up with Millie, a British girl I worked with at AIDA Promotions in Adelaide – the job that pushed me over the edge of sanity and into this mixed-up experiment in the first place. She's been living in the outback for as long as I've been living here in Melbourne, but she's finally emerged from the dirty shrub she's spent the last four months sleeping in to wash her hair and rejoin civilization. She'll be at the show on Sunday as well, which is nice... Everything is coming together for the last two furious, high-octane weeks of the year. Last night at work I found out that our bar is closed for New Year's Eve because we only managed to get a license until one am... I was planning on working NYE for the fat stacks and free booze, but now that the decision has been made for me, I am WIDE EYED AND JUBILANT!! So many possibilities. So many opportunities. Christmas. New Years. Fuck the resolution, someone hand me a beer right now.

Okay, maybe don't... I've toyed with the idea of dashing a whole year's worth of restraint and self-control just for the joyous thrill of doing it. Smashing my own arrogance and destroying something beautiful... fuck that would be awesome. But no, I'm NOT going to do that, I have four more drinking days left and sixteen days to use them, fuck man that's not even hard, this really is not a challenge anymore. I probably won't make the final decision on whether I'm doing 52 Days I 2013 until about March... or maybe I'll try and put it off until later... and later, and later again. Who can tell at this stage? I'm just sitting at my computer, here and now, fingers fluttering and eyes pupils dilating in the darkness. The blinds are drawn, my shirt is off, the floor is shaking from techno. I think I'm going to cook some bacon.

Peace, Taco.

I Don't Care

My eyes are heavy and my shirt is on the floor, it's hot tonight in Richmond. I'm listening to this album called 'Poor Boy/Lucky Man' by some guy called Asaf Avidan and his band, The Mojos. I had never heard of these strange people before today, and I never would have if I hadn't met a couple of people on my tour today, had lunch with them, and then told them to add me on Facebook. The guy added me first, and then the girl. I checked both of their about sections, (god, this is getting a bit to 'twentyfirst century social interaction' isn't it? Ugh) noticing in the girl's, whose name I refuse to write because I cannot pronounce it, that she keeps a blog. So I went onto this blog, and saw a few quotes – some really nice stuff actually, but the thing that really caught my attention was a song called 'Your Anchor' by the crew I'm listening to right now.

So I downloaded their album, and I'm listening to it, and because the only torrent (jargon, jargon, jargon) I could find of theirs was their discography, I have their other two albums as well. Maybe I'll give them a listen. This music, this vaguely folky, rocky, guitary kind of thing... oh look, a horn has started playing, lonely over an acoustic guitar riff. That's quite nice. I feel that this music is passionate and impressively raw – someone cried over this I think. Someone at least shed some bodily fluid. Someone cares a lot about the sound that is coming out of my speakers right now, and I'm really making an effort to be that person that cares as well.

Fuck I wish I could find something to be passionate about, I really feel like I have all this pent up energy inside of me, but nothing to throw it onto... and I can't just 'use it up' – it doesn't work like that. I'm sitting here, listening to this undoubtedly beautiful music, but I'm finding it really hard to relate it to anything real. What are these people singing about? What machine are they raging against? I feel like I'm almost at the point where Winston ends up at the end of Nineteen Eighty-Four when he has fought all his life against the creeping tendrils of the party and their mind-controlling propaganda machine, but then just as his final opportunity for redemption is at hand – when the party finally has him killed – he finds it within himself to submit to them and become one with his meaningless, lobotomized contentment. I feel like I am so close to saying, “well, that's it, who cares if things are bad for some people, who cares if I'm being marketed to, who cares if I have designer products thrown at me every day – what if I like it like that?”

I feel like I have to get angry at things, or be upset about something, in order to 'find a voice' in comedy – but what if I don't see the world like that? Fuck, I know this is even wrong to think, but what if I see the world as an inherently happy place? That is such a confusing statement to have just made – look at what I just said. Look at what you just said Aidan. “This is wrong, but I think things are good.” WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THAT? But apparently everything really is fucked, and as an intelligent, rational, observant human being, I'm supposed to notice that and be angry about it. And if I don't, then I'm naïve. Stupid. I'm enjoying my life, but I know that there are so many people out there that aren't – they don't even have the opportunity to enjoy anything. The vast majority of the people in this world are born, feel hungry, and then they die – that's a Louis CK joke, and it's so terribly true. But I'm having a good time though... fuck... what am I supposed to do about that? Do I stop having a good time? Should I be angry about the fact that I'm having a good time? Or should I just be happy with the fact that I've drawn the lucky number in life's ridiculous lottery and continue on with my easy life and simple pleasures, trying not to think about the writhing hell that continues to burn daily in most of the rest of the world?

I want to end this by just deferring to another one of my, 'oh well this is too hard to think about now, let's all have doughnuts' punchline/endings. The ones I'm so good at writing that tie everything up in a little bow... but I shouldn't. I can't. Fuck. This stuff really doesn't work like that. I just don't know what else to do... I can't offer myself a solution, I want to care about the bad things that are happening in the world, but every day as I wake up and find myself feeling good about everything, I am stared in the face by the harsh truth of the matter – I really don't care. I just really don't. What am I supposed to do about that? I hate my indifference, but it's mine, and I'm so indifferent that I don't even care. Catch 22. The ultimate trap. Staring truth in the face, it hurts, or at least, I know it should. Help me, someone, I am stuck in a paradox.

Peace, Taco.

Failed Organization

Directly to my left stuck to the wall with Blu-Tack is an A4 piece of paper with a bunch of dates and corresponding dollar amounts listed on it, which are divided into two columns: 'spent' and 'earned'. This depressed, abandoned piece of written record is just the latest in a long line of failed attempts at organization that stretches as far back into my past as I can remember. I'm always trying to order things like this, and I always give up. Half-finished projects and notebooks full of meaningless numbers haunt me from the bottom drawer of my bedside table. Why?

The column on the left of this thing hanging on my wall is the 'spent' column, and the one on the right is 'earned'. Basically, from what I can tell after deliberately ignoring it for the last two weeks, the idea of this little table was that I would write down every dollar I spent on the left, and every one I made on the right, but I think the catch was that only money that didn't pass through my bank account would be included... the idea behind this was that, of my two jobs, one pays in cash and one pays into my account. So my cash job would fund spending money, and my other job would be for rent, which is direct debited on the fifteenth of the month. Since I make roughly $250 a month more from my legit job than I need for rent, I should be able to save $250 a month in my account, and so if the 'spent' column equalled the 'earned' column on this little sheet, then I'd be $250 up at the end of each month.

It was a good system, in theory, but there are millions of variables that always contribute to these things not working out. I won't go into any of them here because we all know that to organize the finances of a twenty-one year old male requires at least a bachelor in some sort of accounting as well as a keen readiness to accept mysterious syphoning of money into nefarious late-night/early-morning frivolities. That having been said though, surely I should have been able to stick to the system I'd devised for myself for longer than – hold up, I'll just read the dates on the paper... – nineteen days. Jesus christ, that's woeful.

Nineteen days of diligence... this reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to race marbles down my Hot Wheels car tracks two at a time, pitting the marbles against each other in a sixty-four-marble elimination competition and studiously recording the scores as one beat another and another and another and eventually the grand final was contested by the remaining two. I had massive sheets and tables and a track that extended across my room and I would draw up the fixtures in preparation for the competition, and the games would begin. Inevitably though, the four that ended up making it all the way through to the finals were my four favourite marbles, and the gold one always won because I thought it looked prettiest – I was never one to accept the outcomes of pure chance. I could never sit by and watch my world be ruled by chaos... now that I'm twenty-one though, controlling reality is hardly as simple as giving old 'goldie' a little nudge at the start of the race. Shit is real in here... shit is DEEP.

I do it all the time: my system for recording comedy and blog ideas is split into two books, the distinctions between which I have yet to be able to confidently define... and each book is split into a front and back section, which are also separated in an equally arbitrary fashion. This one has jokes... that one has premises... but then this one has a few premises that are sort of half in joke format... and that one has stuff that's slightly more developed... and this one has stuff I tried last night... but that one has a few bits and pieces in it that belong in the other book but I'd left it at home that day... that one has something about Christopher Hitchens next to a shopping list... this one has poems on the middle page. It all means NOTHING. USELESS. DROSS. Swear words.When I go to find my new bit about how my housemate owes me eight beers, I know which book I wrote it in, because I just remember... as much as I wish that I had a system, so I didn't have to remember anything, I don't. So to the casual observer, it may look like my life is arranged neatly in a simple system that allows me to work at optimal efficiency, but this casual observation is a fallacy. My shit is fucked. I don't know where anything is. I'm admitting it. Right now. I'M COMING APART AT THE SEAMS!!!

I don't know what else to write here, because I didn't plan this piece of confused word-jumble out before I wrote it. I guess I should end with a funny quip – something to tie everything together nicely and make me feel good again, so that I can accept the mess that is my bedraggled existence with a smile and a flick of my long, flowing hair. Quips... jokes... funny chucklings... if only.

Peace, Taco.

Waiting for Inspiration

I don't really know what to write about today, or this week, I feel like my juices are a bit used up at the moment... ew that sounds weird, I kind of want to backspace that, but I won't. Unblinking honesty, that's what I'm all about. Breaking down boundaries. I'm such a fearless crusader of truth.

It's weird that I want to be a comedian, or a writer – something where I get to have views, and then express them skilfully to a large audience through whatever medium I choose. I want to be this thing, but right now I don't really feel like I have very strong views on anything much. Like I care about shit like global warming, and music, and people being free, but I feel kind of abstracted from these problems because I live such a comfortable life... but this comfortable life that I live is what is currently allowing me to develop my craft (that's apparently what I'm doing here) as a writer and comedian, and this period of development right here is what will give me the voice to say things that I want to say, when the time comes that I figure out what those things are.

It still sometimes feels like I'm cheating myself out of real living though; sitting around here writing trivial little jokes and churning out random thousand-word chunks of writing. What am I working towards? Just the abstract goal of 'being a comedian'? 'Being a writer'? What kind of goal is that? I have always said that I want to be someone who says something meaningful with the things that I do, not just someone who does them for the sake of doing them – these things, flimsy semblances of life direction that they are, are only worthy goals if I have something worthwhile to say. But right now I feel dangerously ambivalent and hazy in my convictions. I don't feel like I care very much about anyone except myself, and I don't like that, but I don't know how to change it either.

Five months ago when I moved here I was sure that I had found the thing in my life that I wanted to pursue, and I still believe that, but I still wouldn't say I have definitely found something to be passionate about. I think the difference between a hack comedian or writer and a great one is as small as the strength of the convictions and beliefs they express through their chosen medium. Any hack comedian can talk about politics, or religion, or suicide, and any great writer can put down forty-thousand words about the differences between men's and women's toilets... these simple distinctions between topics are not what make careers trivial. An artist's work becomes trivial when they are only expressing superficial feelings – feelings that they know they are supposed to express, and may even be aware that they want to be expressing, but they don't really, truly have. Bill Hicks wasn't an amazing comedian because he talked about politics and conspiracy theories in the second half of his career, he was an amazing comedian because he actually cared about something. So it's all well and good for people to say, “you just have to speak from your heart and speak about what you actually care about” – that's obviously very good advice. That's not the hard part though. Everyone is speaking from their heart, all the time, every day people say what they really think and say it with conviction because they don't want to be misunderstood. The hard part though, is finding something to care about that strikes so deeply within yourself – myself – that saying what you really think is no longer simply a monotonous exercise in honesty, it actually becomes important.

When I find something to care about – like something that really, instinctively makes me give a fuck – I know I'll stop peppering my writing and comedy with disclaimers about how 'I don't really know where this is going' and 'I guess that's what I'm trying to say'. Conviction will come, at least I hope it will. Fuck, I am sick of waiting.

“Don't wait for your dreams, Taco! Go out and get them!”
Fuck off dickhead, I'm busy watching rap battles on YouTube.

Peace, Taco.

Now We're Fucked

Okay, so what's this about then? I feel a little shit all of a sudden. I feel a bit strange. I got a call today from Ben who is one of the guides for Peek Tours, the walking tour company that I've been getting about half of my paycheque from for the last few months. He said he had to cancel his tour this morning because he only had two people rock up, and when he went to check out the competition (I'm Free Tours) their guy had like twenty people... that's a lot of people for a Monday. That's worrying.

They must have been doing something in the month or two that they've been running that has given them these numbers, but what that thing is, I am absolutely clueless... I've never even SEEN THEIR FLYERS!?! But the fact of the matter now, is that they have fucking WAY MORE people, and we are left with barely any base from which to make money. This is stressful because tours is really the main base of my income right now, and add to that the fact that I've just faced this week, that I'm going to have to quit Yah Yah's after the new year. I won't rant and spit here right now because I don't think that'd help anything, but to put it plainly, I can't work in that place anymore. I hate it. It is fucking terrible.

So let's look at how things are now then... in about a week, my two sole sources of income now have a limited life, one due to work conditions, and one due to competition. Fuck. FUCK. !!! Things were going way to smoothly... I know I'll be able to get work at another bar with Sean around February when his new project kicks off, but until then, and until the final security of my twenty-second birthday rolls in (twenty-two is the age when I can finally claim centrelink... but more on that well of shame when it rolls around in two months' time) … (THIS PIECE IS INCOHERENT!!)

Until February, I'm going to be waiting in the wings, basically. I'm going home for Christmas, but now that I'm faced with it and the looming rent deadline on the fifteenth, I don't know how I'm going to be able to get the coin together unless one final gambit pays off... Tomorrow I'm going to go down to the I'm Free tour and suss out their situation. I'm going to have to move fast... I'll have to talk to this guy... ugh... FUCK... I think I'm admitting to myself right now already that I'm going to be jumping shit... FUCK... this sucks so hard. I want to bring the Peek Tours guides over as well and make sure everyone can still keep doing tours... I won't know what the score is until I meet this guy tomorrow and suss him out, and suss out their guides situation.

Shit just got really stressful this week. No more smooth sailing. Oh yeah, I had some gigs yesterday though. Well I say 'gigs', one was ONLY comics, so it was basically a workshop, and for some reason I got really freaked out when I was on stage and bailed... I'm kind of pissed off that I did that, because I could have hung around longer and got some really good feedback on jokes... anyway, that's neither here nor there. I went and did another spot at Voltaire after that and did a new bit which went pretty well, but the recording fucked up so I didn't even get to listen back and see what I could polish up... Ugh.

The getting drunk and partying on Saturday night was really fucking good... but I don't feel like that really matters at this point. It wasn't especially satisfying and felt pretty arbitrary to be honest... like, why am I drinking? Why do I need to go out and party? What have I done to warrant this? It was really lucky that I had the Saturday off work because I would have killed myself if I'd had to go in and had my face spat in for five and a half hours again by... *breathe* … ugh... fuck... breathe, breathe. This ranks as EASILLY the most unreadable and retarded thing I have ever posted. Don't even bother.

Peace, Taco.

I'm Going to get Drunk

I can't fucking wait until tomorrow night. I always put too much stock in these planned evenings, but I guess that's just the way I operate. I'm a schemer. I like to plan things. I like to be in control? Maybe... that could be taking things a little too far. Stop trying to psychoanalyze yourself Tugzy. Chill the fuck out.

I've got work tonight at midnight, as P.U., but this Friday shift doesn't look like being the normal burning drudgery that I wade through every regular weekend because the promise of a whole Saturday of drinking and immorally festive behaviour is looming, bright and hopeful in the distance. Goon is the drink, my friends, and two-dollar-fifty bottles of bitter Chardonnay sit waiting for my thirsty stomach on the shelves of Aldi just one block down Victoria Street. My man Samson Benger is down from Adelaide in one of the rarest random-chance encounters that I have experienced in a long time – the kid has come down for a once-in-a-blue-moon weekend away on the very same weekend that I choose to take my first Saturday off since moving to Melbourne. Stars are aligning and wolves can clearly be heard howling behind the mountains.

The worn-out deck of playing cards that adorn my desk is currently fourty-seven out of fifty-two cards finished, and tomorrow the fifth-last card will be written off. I don't even know how I'm going to contain my excitement after knocking-off of work at five-thirty am... I'm going to have to devise some way of getting to bed. I'll rig a system of pipes up to a bottle of chloroform and hang them from the roof of my bedroom so that a fine mist of knock-out gas will come down in a violent shroud and engulf me bodily upon my return home this morning. I will pay someone to sleeper-hold me when I walk in the door. I'll buy a cryogenic sleep-pod and power it with human tears. I'll... I'll... FUCK! I'm way too excited.

Do you know what it's like working less than twenty hours a week and going to comedy five nights a week to watch people do the thing that you love, and learn from them, and two or three of those five nights you get to do that thing too? Do you know what it's like to spend the majority of daylight hours in any given week writing jokes and stories, and reading brilliant books and browsing facebook and the internet and re-watching old Simpsons episodes? Do you have any fucking idea how brilliant this shit is? But I don't party enough... I really don't... somehow I've managed to trick myself into believing that what I do when I'm not earning money can still be fairly classified as work, and so now that I have given myself this rare opportunity to really get rowdy, I'm so over-ready for the occasion that there is a reasonable chance I'll spoil it by passing out at ten pm anyway? Who can honestly say they've been there? Well everyone, probably, but I bet you were all teenagers huh? I feel like a fucking sixteen year old.

I'm excited, energized, prepared, poised, and anticipant... apparently that's not a word? Fuck off it isn't, that's simple verb-to-noun conversion we're looking at there. Anticipant. Anticipant. An-ti-ci-pant. Fuck off. Good.

Peace, Taco.

This Post is a Little Bit Arrogant but Eeeeh...

Karmon's 'Wowshit' is blasting from down the passage, bass is shaking the floorboards and the fifteen-hundred dollar sound system in our living room is being given its daily workout. I love living with these cats, every week during the day the sunny ambience of the house is inevitably broken when one of the three DJ inhabitants of my Richmond abode decide to jump on the deck s and have a mix. Deep house and techno are the staples of this summer, and while the weed smoke sits heavy under the ceiling and soaks in to the plaster, the pounding bass sends ripples through the air. I sit in my room and write. Listen. Focus.

Then every weekend at sunrise a new horde of loud, obnoxious freaks crawls through our front door and pile themselves on couches and empty floorspace and throb with the music. They are messy and uncouth and ugly and their eyes twitch and their faces are dirty from sweat and alcohol. They are fucking brilliant.

What I have noticed, pretty much since I moved into this place, is that this is the house I have always wanted to live in. Constant parties, a parade of new faces and stupid conversations, drinking, drugs, people... this is the place I wished so hard for every weekend from the moment I turned eighteen, but never managed to secure. I always felt like I was on the outside of some huge social network, forever looking in through the tinted windows, trying to make out the figures within. I strained to see the people inside as they did all the amazing things I thought I could see them doing, I beat myself up wondering why I could never find the way to acceptance. I now realize that this very desperation which has so shaped me the last few years was the reason that I never felt like I was in the middle of things – that I always felt like I was on the outside looking in.

Now, only a year or so later, I have stopped going out and looking, begging for that acceptance and trying furiously to get into the middle of that scene; the town scene. Ironically, after all that fruitless toil, it is only now that I have stopped trying that I somehow find myself sitting in the middle, in the room with everyone else, behind the tinted glass. Of course that's not how it feels, it still feels like I'm on the outside of something, and when the people come into my house on a Saturday or Sunday morning, I don't feel like these are my people coming home, or that I am one of them and they are here to see me, because they're not... but I know that to anyone sitting where I used to sit, out in the world of clubbing and partying and weekend benders, I must look like I'm running the show back here.

I guess the lesson here is something that I've been repeatedly telling myself for quite a while now, something that is undoubtedly, irrevocably true, but that never seems to fully sink in, no matter how often I say it. Everyone is insecure, everyone is troubled, everyone stresses about things and no one really has it as together as they would have the world believe. We are all struggling to fit in somewhere, or impress someone, or live up to some lofty ideal. I look at some people and just think, “wow, you are just fucking cool”... some people just seem to have it and exude positivity and excellence wherever they go. But those people are looking at someone else too, saying the same shit, and wondering the same things. “How do they do it?” We're all looking to someone else, wondering how they built their house of cards... well... like maybe not Brad Pitt or something.

Brad Pitt is the apex of humanity. He is the monolithic idol from which all subsequent human endeavour can be traced. And with that grand, overreaching statement, I think I'm just about finished for today.

Peace, Taco.

3121 Hangs

Yesterday I had only one person on my tour, an Indonesian girl called Neysha, and so instead of packing my bags and going back home in a huff, I decided to take her on a quick tour in exchange for her buying me lunch (atlantic salmon... I get my money's worth). We were going to go check out Ballarat after lunch which would have been nice but in the end we couldn't because it got a bit late in the day, so we went our separate ways. It was a lovely afternoon all in all, and I'd like to thank the lovely Neysha for lunch, although … (I pondered long and hard over which conjunction to use here because it seems that the use of either 'and' or 'but' to preface the information I'm about to deliver would set the tone for the rest of this bit and betray my feelings towards the events I intend to describe... I have definitely over-thought this... hurry up Taco, people are getting bored) … there was something else that was far more interesting than salmon.

We were sitting at the tram stop in Richmond waiting for the tram to head back into the city to Southern Cross Station. I sat on the end of the bench on the corner of Church and Victoria streets and Neysha sat in the middle, to my right. To her right again there sat an old man, probably around sixty-five or seventy years old, dressed as most old men usually dress and waiting for the tram like we were. Neysha and I talked for a while about Richmond and why I love living in this suburb – to paraphrase my housemate Brodie, “it's that 3121 real shit” – there's a real grittiness about Richmond and I told her I enjoyed that. While we were talking, as if on cue, a local smackhead approached the bench. I've seen this girl before, wandering aimlessly around Victoria street in the middle of the day, stumbling, glazed eyes, riding the tram with a lost look on her face. She's one of many sad characters that populate the streets in this shitty inner-city suburb of Melbourne, and I'd always had my suspicions.

She approached from the right – from the other side of Church St – and looked first at me, but must have assumed that the girl I was with, being as she was roughly the same age as me, was my girlfriend. Her eyes then fixed on the old man, and she stopped herself just in front of him and squatted on the footpath in a submissive, prostrate position before looking up at him and engaging in conversation. Her voice was thin and high-pitched, and she was clearly drifting in and out of lucid consciousness, never fully in control of herself, but she grabbed the reins for long enough to look into his eyes and ask, “you looking for a good time?” As she said it she made a motion with her right hand to imitate the way she would suck his tired, sixty-five-year-old dick to a climax for some pithy sum of money that I didn't quite manage to overhear. I was paying as much attention as I could at this point while still trying not to be too obvious... it was hard to maintain an air of normality and Neysha and I had stopped talking as soon as the afternoon's twisted courtship had commenced. I wanted desperately to hear what he was saying, but I couldn't grasp much of anything. Maybe he said something to her that I didn't hear, or maybe he didn't even reply to her, but whatever his voice did or didn't tell her, I could understand everything from his uncomfortable body language... he tacitly refused her subsequent urges and offers to give him her phone number. “Do you want to call me later?” She asked. “I just need some money for food and a packet of smokes.” She was getting a little more forceful, sensing, surely, that there was no relief to be had here.

All this time I said nothing, and Neysha said nothing, and we both allowed what was definitely the saddest, most enthralling spectacle we were likely to see for quite a while, to play out. The woman with the thin voice stood up after about thirty seconds, having obtained neither business nor money from her client, and walked away in the direction that she had come. Once she was out of earshot I resumed talking to Neysha and told her about how I'd seen this woman before. I saw her with a bunch of other broken, drug types across the road from Woolies a month or so ago; one of the guys she was with was trying to sell a gold necklace to some fresh looking Asian kid with a hoodie and trackies. He was talking with quick, dirty slang about how he'd stolen the necklace off of some guy he'd bashed the night before, and was using words like 'bruz', which made my skin crawl. It reminded me of the way some of my friends back in Adelaide talk, and it scared me to think that people I know are constantly only three bad decisions away from staring this life in the face too. They had left the hooded Asian with the promise to be back in half an hour – they were “going off to hit the hammer” (inject heroin). I told Neysha this other story to go with what we had just seen, but I left out the part about it reminding me of people I knew because I didn't want to start down that depressing conversational path, only having met this person five or six hours ago.

Both times I've seen glimpses of the course underside of Victoria Street, 3121, I have laughed to myself. I don't really know why, I don't know what about seeing a drug addict solicit prostitution or overhearing another try to sell stolen jewellery is funny – actually I don't think anything about it is funny, not at its core. At the very base of it, it's fucking sad. It's terrible, but it's also surprising – not that it exists at all, but that it exists right there, right in front of me. It's kind of scary, but also kind of exhilarating too, although the naivete required to believe that makes me want to rethink myself a little... nevertheless though, the sheer shock of the whole situation is where the laughter comes from. When the heroin lady walked away from us after failing to pick up her lonely, uncomfortable target, Neysha and I both laughed to eachother with raised eyebrows and twisted faces. We weren't laughing out of amusement, we were just shocked... so fucking shocked... we knew what we'd seen, and as much as we were laughing, we both knew that neither of us was making a joke.

“When the heroin lady walked away...” that's how I started that sentence. That's how I described her. “The heroin lady.” That's all she is to me, that is her only distinguishing characteristic. Not her face, not her eyes, not her hair or her voice or her clothes or her views on China. Heroin... that's who she is, and that's what she does. Jesus Christ... where do I even begin?

Peace, Taco.

Enrolling to Defer

You know what I just did? Like, just right now? I paid eighty-nine dollars to the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre (VTAC? More like Vee-WACK! Amirite?) so that they'll process my application for uni next year. I'm applying for Bachelor of Arts at University of Melbourne, and the plan is to get accepted, transfer my one-and-three-quarters of a year's worth of credits from Adelaide over to Melbourne, get a student card, and then defer again... maybe do one subject... maybe... maaaaybe... that's a bit fucking maybe. I'm definitely not stoked on the idea of traipsing back to uni next year, so the question is begged then; why apply at all?

I've had some great times during my prolonged years of tertiary education: Adelaide University was a bastion of restraint during three years of my life which were filled, almost exclusively, with drinking, dancing, and lip-bitten comedowns. Every week of classes that pulled me out of bed in those torturous days studying politics, morality, and mindless electives is another week that I can count as having not thrown away completely into the furnace. I learned some degree of planning – sitting in the smoking area of a club at 8am on a Sunday, it seems irresistibly tempting to drop another sixty on pills and cross fingers that this Monday's comedown wouldn't be so rough. I learned to keep to deadlines, and I learned – or to be fair, let's say rediscovered – the joy in feeling smarter than other people. What did I do this week, you ask? Well I didn't really do very much for the first three days, to be honest, but on Thursday night I sat in a computer lab all night researching and typing out a gloriously passable account of Rawlsian social theory... what's that? You don't know what that is? Well it's all about... well... fuck, actually I've forgotten, but seriously guys, I did that assignment, and for a week afterwards when people asked me what I'd been up to, that was the dick-hardening answer that I threw out to their bemused faces.

Had I not attended uni for the past three years, my life would have been almost completely devoid of any structure and any purpose. In the four years that have passed since I finished school I've been at uni for at least a few weeks each year – fuck in 2010 I actually did a whole year!! While my measly six upper-level course completions speaks volumes for the sub-par effort that I've put in during those four years, it feels good to have done anything at all... I mean, I almost feel like I've been able to get the best of both worlds with this double life of uni student slash hardcore club-head that I've been leading. On one hand, I know what it's like doing assignments and writing essays and sticking to deadlines and going to tutes and studying and putting off drinking and facebooking during lectures etc. etc... but on the other hand, I have delved, at least some way, into the perilous world of hardcore drug taking and seen the shadow cast by our society's vast underbelly. I'm no Rhodes Scholar, nor am I about ready to stand in an alleyway and sell four nights a week, but I've had a taste of both paths, and I feel wiser for it... is that an arrogant thing to say? Is that repulsively self-congratulatory? Am I just trying to warp my own arbitrary experiences into a coherent narrative to excuse myself for the lack of direction that my formative years have been characterised by? I honestly don't think so.

I paid that eighty-nine dollars today, the blow was made so much softer by the fact that I cleaned UP on my tour this morning, but when I paid it I couldn't help but think that what I was doing was basically flushing that cash away for the chance to be able to say that I haven't thrown it all away just yet. Uni is such a clearly defined path, and I can't say that I've totally given up the idea of going back at some point and finishing my (snigger) Bachelor of Arts... but right now I'm so happy – so insanely, illogically, unreasonably content with where I'm headed and the way my life is working – that it would be stupid to fuck with everything just because forgoing the safety net of tertiary education feels a little scary. When I came out here, I came out with the intention of living without a net. I wanted to stare into the abyss and jump, knowing, guessing, hoping, that there would be something in between me and that infinite black to grasp onto, and that that something would be enough to justify the sheer stupidity of the initial leap of faith. I wanted to exist beyond my familiar comfort zone.

I'm not going back to uni next year, but the option is still there, I haven't lost sight of the path completely, not yet, maybe soon though. For now, the edge is still out there. For now, I'm still holding on.

Peace, Taco.

November Life Update

What has even been going on for the last few weeks? I haven't kept y'all very well updated have I? Not that the majority of people give two shakes of an indifference stick about my day-to-day potterings and trips to the toilet, but for those of you who do, enthralling tales of a young man out in the wild lie within. Tacooooo is doin' it for hisself!

I have seven days of drinking left for twenty-twelve (FINALLY, my compulsive need to type numbers has paid off, none of this 'two-thousand and twelve' bullshit) and it's looking right now like they are almost all spoken for. I'm saving four for my trip back to Adelaide from the 20^th to the 28^th of December, which means only three remain. One will be for next Thursday when I hit up the Peek Tours pub crawl in an effort to gauge the amount of alcohol required to achieve complete standing-unconsciousness – doing it for science – and that means the last two days will fall somewhere in between a week from now, and December 20^th. I've found the best nights, even with my freakishly regimented year of monitored alcohol intake, have been the unplanned ones, and so with that in mind, I won't be pre-booking nights for those two remaining nights of drinking, but I'm sure that someone cool will pop up in the three or so weeks and convince me that Now! Now! Now! is the time for drunkenness.

Money-wise things are looking slightly tighter than I would like – and with every indulgent cafe lunch the noose keeps slipping – but as it stands I am making $250 a week from working at Yah Yah's, and probably another $250 a week from doing walking tours. Let's make that $200, just to be conservative. Realistically I'm probably pocketing around $550 a week, but at least a hundred of that goes straight into the wind so it's not even worth counting, $450 it is. Rent is $170 a week, so with another piece of nifty rounding that leaves me $250 a week to play with – and I really have to catch myself here, because although I use the term 'play with', what that should really mean is 'put away in an envelope and not look at'. I have to pay $500 by mid-January for the festival show I'm doing with Rob Caruana at Station 59, and a bus up to Adelaide and Plane back for Christmas – probably another $250 – and I'll be wanting some party-money for when I get down there, so unless the opportunity for sort of Mafia-sponsored contraband run on the Greyhound bus presents itself in the next month, that'll be four weeks of income spoken for. Conveniently, four weeks is the exact amount of time that stands in between me and Adelaide right now, so without getting too confident here, I think it's gonna be ok... there's always the surprise phone bill to worry about, but fuck it... live a little.

My ankles still hurt from repeated falls off my skateboard, although I'm getting better (marginally), although I'm guessing it's going to be a while before these badboys return to their regular size. Cruising down to the river-side skatepark the other afternoon with Brodie and his bro was easilly call of the week, watching people who can actually do things other than roll around gave me the balls to eat shit in the hope of being able to land even one tiny little trick. I just want to be cool guys!!! Fuck, that is seriously not far from the truth.

Also our internet is capped, which is probably the most crippling ailment known to civilized man. I have slowly begun to doubt the existence of AIDS, Hepatitis, and all forms of cancer, by the logic that if God wanted us to suffer needlessly through our lives, he wouldn't waste his time with microscopic viruses and fiddly tumours, he'd just cripple us by taking away our access to the infinite database of porn that should, according to all sane reasoning, be available to us instantly at any hour of the day. That's exactly what he's been doing to me and my housemates for the last six days, folks. God works in mysterious ways, and today his name is Telstra.

I think I just lost my notebook – one of three, even in note-taking I am meticulous and thoroughly organized – no massive loss really because this one contains the hurried scribblings of ideas for jokes and stories that I then look back on and expand in my other two books, but still annoying nonetheless. I've found myself lately thinking about the way that we use paper and the written word as a method for dumping the thoughts that occupy our brains onto a physical medium, thus eliminating the need for our minds to stagnate upon them. It's kind of like the way a computer uses a hard drive to store information it isn't using right now, while the info that it does need immediate access to is stored on the RAM. The written word is so amazingly useful because it allows us to free up our minds constantly for new information, and ensures that if we have a good idea, we don't need to stress ourselves remembering it, because we can just record it and have it waiting for a time when we feel ready to pick the thought back up again and follow it through.

I've gone off track slightly... but now that we're here, you can get a pretty good idea of how my life is faring right now. Without anything serious to think about – no real troubles to speak of, no stress, no pain, no emotional hangups – I am free to float and dawdle around whatever thoughts and pastimes I want. Sometimes things feel hard – comedy is not an easy pursuit, as friendly as the people might be (and they are), the stage is a lonely place – but whenever I feel myself getting down on setbacks, I recount the things I've done in the past week and shake my head once the ridiculous simplicity of my life sinks in. Life gets hard friends, but right now it seems easy.

Peace, Taco.

Comedy Laundry

My Beautiful Laundrette is on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, contains a number of washing machines in varying sizes and dryers of varying noisiness. It is a pleasant, if bare environment, and always seems to be kept at optimal room-temperature by fans – I haven't counted how many – positioned in above eye level and hanging from the walls or ceiling. I go there every couple weeks to do my laundry (duh, fuckhead) and... wait... hold up... ok, what the fuck was that?

In the past months I've become increasingly frustrated by what I have started to understand is the biggest problem with my comedy. As much as I pet and cajole myself after every gig, and as much as I mentally prepare myself beforehand, I can't seem to reliably win the audience over. Every now and then I'll have a great gig, but that's nothing to celebrate – everyone gets lucky every now and then. For the majority of my mediocre spots I seem to have the audience steadily suspended somewhere between vague enjoyment and frightened annoyance and as great as this may sound, it really is not gold comedy territory. So I've been thinking about why this is and what I can do about it, and I think I've hit upon a small something... hopefully? Maybe? We'll see I guess.

Firstly, I mentioned that I've had good gigs, but I mentioned it dismissively, and with good reason – it seems to me that most, if not all, of the really good gigs I've had have been mostly down to luck, and I say that not because I'm trying to get down on myself, but because it's true. The approach that I've been taking with comedy has been very much along the lines of “write material; decide whether it's funny enough to do on stage; do new material on stage; decide whether I should keep it; compose predetermined sets from bits of new material that worked mixed with old material”. I guess there's no problem with that approach, in theory – ah those beautiful words – in theory it should be fine. In theory I can continue to push through a wall of silence after my opener falls flat, or receives a lukewarm response. In theory I should just keep going and try the next joke. Maybe they'll like this one better? Maybe that was just a false start? NO! That's a stupid fucking theory; comedy isn't about theories, and comedy isn't about robots getting on stage telling joke after joke after joke and crossing their fingers in the hope that a few of them stick... fuck... FUCK... COME ON...

I had noticed that my gigs had been falling in quality – maybe a better way of putting it would be that they have been lacking in consistency or predictability – and I tried a few things. You'll notice up top there at the start of this piece that I reached out for anger and attacked you, my gentle readers, when I realised that I had gone three sentences into my intro without cracking one joke – I got nervous and lashed out... it was a cheap shot borne of fear, and I need to dead those cheap shots. Put them away, and start really reading the audience. Connecting with them. I need to tell them – let them know? – that it's ok, that I'm in control. Maybe first it would be nice to actually be in control, but hopefully one will beget the other I guess... ugh, thinking about comedy is hard. Comedy is hard. Look guys, all I'm trying to say, and all I will say for the moment, is I've realised that in order to regain control over the quality of my gigs, I'm going to have to go out on a limb and break the fourth wall. Break it, smash it, shit on it, and eat it for breakfast. The audience need to feel like they have some control over what is happening so that when the comedian jumps out and surprises them from behind his cleverly placed misdirections and traps and cleverly constructed sentences, they aren't so surprised that they turn on him. They need to trust me. Trust me audience... please?... Ok., working on it.

By the way the laundrette really is quite nice. Four dollars for a wash cycle, one dollar for fifteen minutes of drying, and everything I said about the room-temperature was true. My Beautiful Laundrette Brunswick St, Fitzroy – I recommend it.

Peace, Taco.

Paying Fines is Shithouse

There is something that instinctively irks me about bureaucratic hoop-jumping. Centrelink, taxes, court dates, fines, rent, uni enrolment; it all seems so over-complicated and every time one of these makes an appearance in my life I find myself walking down the streets muttering swear-words and sulking. Today, this happened.

A month and a half ago I was the unhappy recipient of a fine from the transport people, whatever they like to call themselves, for resting my feet on the seat of a train as I made my way out to Footscray to hit up a comedy gig. I gave them my ID (SA Driver's License) with my Adelaide address on it, and the conductors explained to me that if I just contested the fine as soon as it arrived then everything would be sweet and I'd be let off with a warning. That all seemed well and good at the time, but when Mum Dawgz called me the other day to let me know that my fine for two-hundred and seven Australian Currency Units had arrived, I shuddered with bilious anger at the fresh realisation of the exercise in futility that I was about to embark on – I was shaken from my peace.

I trudged into town, infringement notice in hand, to fix this shitiness – I am not paying a two-hundred and seven dollar fine for putting my feet on a fucking chair, this is the future and I REFUSE to be needlessly oppressed. First stop library: I went in to print my carefully worded letter at the library as my home, inhabited as it is by four young drifters, each in varying stages of emotional decay, does not have a printer. The letter contained phrases like: “to whom it may concern”, “excused having regard to exceptional circumstances”, and the always convincing, “I apologise for any inconvenience and I hope that this matter can be brought to a satisfactory close.” Filthy grovelling, really. I felt dirty, I still feel dirty in fact. I wrote those things, and I can't un-write them now... also I forgot the data cable to connect my phone to the printer, so things weren't looking up.

After obtaining a library printing card, putting a dollar of credit on it, re-typing the letter in notepad in a font that resembled a Soviet military dossier, and printing the thing off, I asked how to work the scanner. “Sorry, you can't scan straight to the photocopier, you have to scan to a USB and then print a copy from that.”
“Why?”
“That's just how it is.”
That's just how it is dude, just leave it – my internal monologue, always the voice of reason – that's just how they do things here. Just let it go... twitch... shudder... *%### … ok, so I left the library and went around the corner to Officeworks where I got another printing card, onto which I put another dollar, and printed off a scanned copy of my drivers license (my excuse for contesting the fine is “I'm from Adelaide, and I didn't know that 'feet-on-seats' was an offense here”... details, details). Armed with my two pieces of contesting evidence, I walked with purpose to the post office, arms swinging, eyes burning, and coins jangling in pocket.

After making it to the post office, past the big red sign hanging on the corner of Little Bourke and Elizabeth that says 'Shopping as Usual' (I could vomit a lake of dark sludge and still not be purged of my deep hatred for this consumerist placard, but that's neither here nor there is it) I wrote the address on a postage-paid envelope and sealed my letter within. I considered not paying for the envelope, but then I thought that maybe when you pay for the envelope they put some special stamp on it which validates it – what if I don't pay? My thingy won't reach the place this will all have been for naught!! – so I paid, because I'm a pussy. Turns out I was right, they do stamp it. Crime doesn't pay kids, stay in school.

I flushed it down the chute of the red mailbox after performing one last OCD-check and then it was gone. Finished. Now begins the extended waiting period while my appeal is processed and re-processed through the dripping annals of the machine before being rubber-stamped by some hooded beetle-man behind a desk in the Transport Department. Hopefully my name will be cleared and I will be merrily released from debt. I guess if I do eventually escape a two-hundred and seven dollar fine then all that running around and frustration at having to deal with the mind-numbing inefficiency of a system where appeals have to be submitted in written form and reasons are called 'excusory clauses' and and every telephone is answered by the same machine... if I get to keep my money then all of this hoop-jumping will have been worth it. I can't help being angry though, even though, if we're honest, it's my fault for not following the rules. What's so fucking precious about those train seats anyway?

Peace, Taco.

Asian Man

Today I was having a little kick around on my skateboard. (just as an aside, I feel so utterly worthless and lame saying, or even typing the word 'skateboard', but I don't know how else to describe the object in question. 'Board' implies a level of familiarity that neither I nor my readers have with the thing, and with that out, that leaves no other option... I've taken to writing 'bateskoard' instead, because I figure if I'm going to be a try-hard loser, I might at least spoonerise) Shit ok, that was a long aside, let's start again... Today I was having a little kick around on my bateskoard in the parking lot of a bunch of council flats where I've taken to practising. It's quiet, usually pretty empty of cars, and there's no one around to watch me eat shit as I regularly do when I try to pull off a kickflip. (yet to land one) Anyway, so my bag was half-hidden behind one of the parked cars while I skated back and forth, ollieing over the crack in the smooth cement and then turning around to go again. It was warm but not hot. I was wearing the same t-shirt I am now – grey with a picture of a withered tree drawn on the front and 'RaymunDo 1108' signed at the bottom. Vintage.

I decided to take a sideways run-up and try an ollie up the kerb and onto the footpath that borders the carpark – the kerb isn't very high, but at this point I was still yet to land anything other than a regular flat ollie, so I wasn't sure how it was going to go. Anyway, cue the inspirational music maestro, because I did it – kicked up, jump, landed on the higher part of the kerb and kept rolling, maintaining my balance. Let the trumpets play!

I went back for another shot, just to prove to myself that it wasn't a fluke the first time – “I am the greatest bateskoarder the world has ever seen”, I thought to myself in a moment of self-indulgent weakness. Up again, landed again. This time though, I had an audience; a decrepit, old Asian man with a walking frame had stopped next to the part of the kerb I was jumping up and had decided to watch me. ME! He saw what I was doing, and saw that it was good! So I went back again, and again, and again, I landed four of those jump-up-the-kerb-trickydoos in a row. It felt good. Something about the whole situation felt kind of off though. While I knew that I liked the appreciation of this near-invalid who, let's be fair, was probably just happy to be watching anything other than rent collection happen in his tired little corner of the world, it felt awkward to be examined so intently. He just stood there and watched, smiling at me and nodding each time I completed my little trick. I felt inadequate – I knew that there was nothing else I could offer him, I had no other tricks up my sleeve; no more songs in my repertoire. Every time I paced back to jump up the kerb another time I felt like I owed him something more for his continued interest, but there was nothing else to give.

Eventually, after like, I dunno, let's say three minutes? After about three minutes I jumped back on my board, went over to the other side of the parking lot and grabbed my bag from behind the car where I'd put it before. I had a few sips of water, then walked over the metal grate at the entrance to the car park and started skating away down the street. I waved goodbye to the frail old man who had been my number one fan for the afternoon and turned down another side street, then another, finally making my way to Aldi to buy some milk, razors, cheese, onions, lettuce. The story trails off here, and there's no moral... probably because for a moral to be found, there has to be some sort of challenge to be overcome. This afternoon was nice, and that man was even nicer. I hope he comes out again one time, but maybe not for a few weeks so I can hopefully have something new to show him next time. I'll start working on my handstand I guess.

Peace, Taco.

She Was Fucked, Basically

She was fucked, basically; two days to go and not a single inch closer to Newport. She hated that she thought in inches – the old, archaic measurements of the past had been long outdated by the metric system and she well knew that and had grown up favouring decimals – but she couldn't help it. Something about the inch, an inch, the word itself, sounded poetic and subtle, as if the simple act of saying she wasn't a single inch closer made real her predicament, and would somehow inspire motivation in her to move. She repeated it over to herself again, “not a single inch closer, not a single inch closer, I'm no closer, not one single inch... fucked, fucked, absolutely fucked...” She was muttering.

The road stretched out ahead of her, and no helpful vehicles were approaching up its long, narrow length, this final semi was definitely her last chance. Time to wait a second, maybe two, before approaching, but any hesitation would be sniffed out immediately so it was imperative – completely and without question – that she act fast, act now. She picked up her bag.

“Excuse me!” her voice was sucked up by the dusty air and soon drowned out by the silence around her, so she began to walk forwards, but still tentative and careful in her approach.
“Excuse me! Sir! Excuse me?” no trace of her anxiety could be allowed to seep into the next sentence or the whole thing would be finished and she might as well turn around and walk back to the city that dwindled in the distance behind her. His head turned, not a pretty head, or even a welcoming one, and two startled flies flew off his cap and zipped off above the tin roof. Here it was, “Here it is.” – her internal monologue shoving one last jolt of encouragement up her spine before finally delivering the five words she'd been storing up and preparing for this one crucial moment. The time for backing out had passed, and she welled up all of the air inside her lungs before measuring out six even syllables in about two and a half seconds of pure terror:

“Mind if I ride along?”

“Sure love, jump on up there with me.” He said it, and she stood there for a second while the sound passed between them as if she'd been struck by a brick. The flies were about to land down on her bag as she jolted out of her trance and quickly sealed their official agreement, “uuuuh... thanks.” And without waiting for his final nod, she started scaling the stairs and threw her bag at her feet in the cabin of the dirty machine.

She settled down and waited for him to finish his pit-stop; now she finally had time to calm herself in silence. Looking around for the first time at her surroundings, she saw all that there was to see – and it wasn't very much to begin with – was covered in tiny red particles. The desert sand was all-encompassing, pervasive, and seemed to swallow any object past the middle distance except the long, thin road that stretched out in front. The sky was an angry yellow-white with the sun still setting in the west and the world was deathly still and silent. Winds were blowing sand around the floor. The petrol station where she had been sitting for the last day and a half was already like a foreign world painted onto the window, rather than the unfortunate outpost of civilization that served as a refuelling depot to interstate travellers. She did not recognize a single detail, and hoped soon to forget even the location of this hopeless little point, with its lifeless tin roof and its shade bereft of shelter. “Finally, we're away,” she said, again to herself, and she picked her bag up from the spot she had put it at first and clutched it to her chest, drawing it closer and waiting for her driver to join them. A day and a half – the unhappy stagnation.

She heard a sound like quick rattling coming from around the back of the cab, the tank was full and he was shaking the last drops of petrol from the metal hose – the last drops we all shake out, whenever we are given the opportunity. “Cost effective,” she mused, “is it cheating the system to milk those last droplets, or is the system cheating you if you don't?” She didn't have time to pursue the idle thought any further, because the driver's side door opened, and the cabin filled momentarily with wind and chill before once again sealing them off from the world. He started the engine. The truck roared to life. The ground started to move and the giant beast lurched forwards. Two days left, and finally, just an inch closer to Newport.

***

Her eyes opened up sharp as she snapped out of her dream like a child's hand recoiling from a flame. The world flooded back.

“What's the time?” the words came scrambled out of her mouth. She wasn't sure who she was saying them to.

“Just past four in the morning”, he said – the truckdriver. He didn't turn his head from the wheel, but every now and then his eyes were glancing up at the rear-view mirror which was tilted in her direction. It struck her that the centre mirror in a truck is superfluous, as the trailer would always obscure the view from behind, even if there was a good-sized window in the back. The thought struck her from side on, and it seemed somehow important, so she held on to it as a piece of trivia for the future. She remembered her conversation with the driver before she had fallen asleep, although she was unsure at what point she had trailed off.

His name was D... or 'Dee'? That was all he had said; she was definitely not mistaken in the pronunciation as she had made sure to memorise it the first time it had been told to her, mostly out of politeness.

“Dee”, she muttered to herself. “It's Dee.” She was always muttering.

“That's the one.” He replied, eyes darting up to the mirror for a second.
She began to recall their conversation in detail, the six or seven minutes of it before she had fallen away into sleep, and she remembered that he had made a good impression on her. He was gruff and brisk with his words, but not angry or reserved, just efficient. The truck had been like a cradle, slowly rocking her back and forth as it shuddered with the bumpy road and churned under its own weight and momentum. Back and forth. Back and forth. One way with the wind. The other way with the slope of the road. She had realized so suddenly that she was unbearably tired, and while it would have been nicer to stay awake and keep this man company while he drove – and truly, he was her saving grace – she could not bear it. Sleep.

The truck had ploughed on, past the sunset, and on into the night. She had told him she was going to Newport and he didn't ask why, he didn't need to, she needn't have even told him that much – he could have guessed. She was asleep by the time the sun was down, and the time in the cabin had passed quicker without the sun beating on the road in front of them. Dee had been silent with his hands on the wheel and allowed her all the rest she needed. Now she was awake, and she spoke, not to herself this time, but directly to him;

“Did I sleep for long?”

“Around eight hours”, he replied briskly, his voice was immediately clear and crisp and stood out amongst the other noises coming from the engine and the mass of metal behind them.

“Eight hours...” she repeated to herself, “I'm sorry for not staying awake to keep you company”, she looked over to him as she apologised, and waited for him to say something back. He just smiled, and flashed his eyes up to the mirror while she looked at him directly. They were looking at eachother, although because of this triangular arrangement, their eyes never actually met.

“How long were you waiting at that petrol station?” he asked her later.

“A day and a night or thereabouts, I caught the bus out from town.”
“And which town would that be?” Dee asked this fair enough question abruptly but it seemed odd to her that as she ventured out of Hampstead her safe, cosy identity could be left at home with her old life behind her.

“I came from Hampstead”, she answered, smiling to herself as she realised her potential for anonymity.
“Me too,” Dee replied, “stayed there 'till I was old enough to read a map.” His eyes stayed steady on the road as he said this, the cab was quiet for a second – was that a joke? She thought quickly to herself that if he had meant what he'd said to be funny, then he might have laughed at it himself to indicate so... but then again he had a way of talking that seemed as if he might be one to let something like that slip by as if it were an accident that he had ever said it at all. A wry smile appeared at the corner of his lips as he saw her mind ticking over; “laugh if you want, it's only the truth.” He had seen through her uneasiness instantly, and that set her back in her seat and made her comfortable.

“Do you pick up many travellers on the road?” she asked him after another break.

“Every now and then – if a person asks, I'll take them as far as I can.”

“Not many people I've met would have the heart to pick up a traveller off the road like this. Someone they've never met before, never even laid eyes on – most people I know would be pretty afraid of that.”

“Maybe you just haven't met many people yet.” he offered back to her, his eyes lazily drifting back up to the mirror to look at her, it definitely wasn't a question, he was telling her plainly. “The way I see it, if someone's asking for a lift, then they're always gonna give someone who comes to them asking something the same courtesy they asked for.”

“Well yeah, maybe that's...”

“Maybe they're asking out of humility, or maybe out of desperation, but either way, if someone's asking for help, then you can be sure that they'd never turn their back on someone they found in a similar position.” This time his words hung on the cabin for a while, she wanted to let him finish his answer properly and felt sorry for interrupting the first time.
“...and I guess everyone needs help from somebody at some point...” she chimed in after she judged that enough time had passed.
“Exactly,” he nodded. “It'd be a dead, unfeeling wretch who could accept help with one hand, and refuse it to his fellow man with the other – I've never met anyone that cold inside.”
“Maybe you just haven't met many people yet.” she said with a wry smile creeping across her dry lips. She saw the corner of Dee's mouth rise a little too, and she smiled more at seeing this. She liked the way his face looked, and she was proud of having made him smile for a second. The truck and it's heavy wheels pulled the road underneath them like a conveyor belt. The sky stood still and the sun burned overhead while the two companions sat comfortably in eachother's company.

***

After another long while and a pit stop and a small flock of birds in the distance they came to the place where the desert meets the sea. The sun was setting, and the truck turned North and followed the coast up towards the apex of the peninsula; Dee would be leaving her there while he headed inland, Newport lay to the West, just one more day across the desert. She looked back over to him and cocked her head to the side before asking him another question.
“When was the last time you picked someone up in your truck?” She wished she could have phrased it better after it came out, she thought it had sounded clumsy and stupid.

“A few weeks ago I had two boys, a couple brothers, sitting where you are now. They talked and talked about their plans for Newport, the summer and the women they were looking for. I set them off by the train station because they said they wanted to try and jump a freighter going across East. Funny boys, but stupid, I'd say they made it over alright though. Then there was another lady a few days before that, heading back East after losing herself. She'd been over in Newport but she said she'd grown tired of it all... I can't say whether she was telling the truth or not, but she wasn't staying gone for good, no way. She was going back, I could feel it. Everyone goes back. No one can ever stay away.”

“What's it like?” She asked him.
“You'll see.” He smiled again, the same smile as before, and nodded his head to the mirror. “I'll be back there myself before long no doubt... just for now though I like to live through the people I meet on the road, out here in the desert. It's nice to put your life on hold for a second, and appreciate the joy in someone else's eyes as they head out and search for their own happiness.”

“I imagine it is, but I can't say I'm...”

“The part of your story that you share here with me, you'll carry that with you now, for as far as your journey takes you I'll be there as a tiny character. I have no way of knowing where all the people I meet end up, and maybe some of them don't end up too well, who knows what happens to you as soon as you get out of this truck... but it's nice to think that out there in the world there are a few people who can remember the guy who picked them up when they needed a hand, held them a while and then set them loose, back into the empty world.”

“I guess that means you're not so selfless then.” She quipped straight away and eyed him from the side again. She felt his eyes looking at her in the mirror like they had been for most of their conversation, and this time finally brought up the courage to peel her eyes away from the side of his face and meet his gaze in the reflection. They stared for a second. Two seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Thirty-five. Someone blinked, and then the moment was broken.

She retreated back into herself after this, and although the mood in the cabin was still good-natured and pleasant, the unsteady suspicion rose within her that this man was not as calm, as perfect, as simple as he had initially seemed. 'Why should he get to ride the glory of other people's accomplishments?' she questioned. 'Why should I suffer and toil to reach my pinnacle when he can simply offer lifts and stand there with me for free?' She felt cheated somehow, she knew she shouldn't be feeling resentful, but something about his peaceful solitude threatened her. She had steeled herself with tough resolve to be ready for every trial that she knew her new life would have ready for her, and she was prepared to face each challenge head on. Greatness only comes through hardship, and yet this man expected to share in others' greatness, without also bearing a share of their pain. The idea repulsed her and seemed parasitic, but she resolved to put it out of her mind. She softened, and then, after realising her harshness, almost pitied him. He would never know the glory of truly achieving a goal, of suffering through the greatest ordeals only to come out the other side and beat them. To be crowned lord of everything, and rise above impossibility. To live. In her mind it was inevitable – the sky was where she was headed.

***

When they pulled in to the train station she slowly stirred from where she had been, propped up against the door half sleeping. Grabbing her bag from between her legs where it had lay in the shade, away from the burning sun, she checked it once to make sure nothing had fallen out. It hadn't, she was ready to go.
“Thankyou again.” she smiled, and looked up at the mirror to meet his gaze, only this time he had ventured to look directly at her as the need to keep his eyes on the road had vanished. She looked at his eyes in the mirror, and he saw the side of her face in profile, once again their gazes never met, and only after she turned away did he return her farewell.
“Good luck.” the last words he offered her. By the time they reached her ears she was already halfway out the door and jumping down the ladder, the train she wanted to jump onto was getting ready to leave. She had to make it, she refused to be caught waiting.

He looked through the glass as she gathered speed and jogged, then ran towards the depot, jumping the fence between the parking lot and the track. She was impatient, but impatience was good, useful, he started the engine again and turned the big hunk of metal around and back out onto the road. Another story he could hold on to, he was part of another victory. Or maybe another defeat, but either way, he had played his part.

She ran fast for the train, panting, pressing on. The weight of her bag was not significant, but it swayed from side to side with her movement as she swung her shoulders to steady herself while running. She held onto the straps and tried to keep the swinging mass still. Full pelt, maximum speed. The train shuddered first from the front way up ahead but she saw it even as far as she was, as she ran she tried to pick out a carriage to jump on to. Something covered but open where she would be sheltered but not cramped. She couldn't sit on an exposed flatbed, she would freeze to death – she needed an open container. She could hear the clicking of the connectors between each carriage get closer and closer together as the front end of the train edged forward and each successive section was picked up. Clang, Clang, Clang. They sounded out across the yards like a row of steel dominoes. She spotted an open door and knew that this was her chance. It was a little towards the back of the train, but if she kept on her current trajectory, even if it was some way behind her when she reached the tracks, she would easily be able to jump on.

She reached the tracks, the open door drew up close until it was almost level with her. She slowed her pace to draw even. Unhooked her bag from around her shoulders and whipped over with her left arm, it landed with a thud inside the dark, empty space. Something inside there smelled and she winced internally, this was going to be a long night devoid of sleep. She would reek of fertilizer on her first night in Newport. Her right hand stretched out to grab onto something, the edge of the train, her fingers reached around quickly for a steady hold but none was there to grab on to. She stopped looking at the ground, she couldn't, she had to watch her hand, to look for something. Something to grab on to. She looked, but there was nothing. Her left foot slipped on a loose rock, 'why are train tracks always built on mounds of rocks?' she thought, infuriated, muttering it to herself. She slipped again, but her hand grabbed something. Yes! She could feel it! And the train was going faster now, faster than she could run, and her feet were completely away from the ground. Off the ground. Moving! Her left hand struggled to join her right and her feet swung around to the inside, in towards the spinning wheels and slowly accelerating machinery. She clung on as the train kept speeding up, speeding up. Much faster and faster and faster. Her legs lurched inwards again and caught something. She swung her hand, another time, wildly, frantically, desperately. Too late. Too slow. Too much ambition.

As she was pulled under, her feet first before her body, the train kept accelerating. It chewed her up indifferently and left her on the tracks, remorseless. She never made it to Newport.