Dezmond is a Downer
My oldest friend is Dezmond but he’s not a great one to ask about the search for happiness because he’s based his entire self-image on being miserable. I’ve known him since we were five, when I saw him weeing on the school oval and thought he had a small garden hose. I still recall his hysterical laughter at my confusion, his mockery of me and my resultant humiliation, and, as far as I can also recall, this was one of the few times I ever saw him happy. (He claims that he became miserable on the day he discovered that if you looked up his left nostril you could clearly see his brain, but I believe the actual moment he really became miserable was when he fell into a shark pool at the aquarium and the shark had a heart attack and died.)
Either way, Dezmond is not a great one to ask for advice because at the end of the afternoon his life philosophy is too negative (‘Life sucks and then you die’), and his patron saint is Saint Rita, the patron saint of lost causes (although it should be noted that Saint Rita has also recently become the patron saint of baseball).
Dezmond’s idea of a perfect day is skipping work and feeling guilty about it, sleeping in until he feels he’s wasted the day, then going to a bad movie and eating so much chocolate during the screening that he can spend the rest of the day feeling fat. The happiest night of his life was the time he got leglessly drunk and woke up thinking that he’d been ripped off with the size of his hotel room, only to realise some time later that he’d passed out in the hotel elevator. The last time I saw him happy was when he’d just received the results of his cholesterol test. ‘The safe range is 3.5 to 7.3 and I got 11.9! How’s that for an achievement!’
Despite all this I sought his advice on my emotional predicament and he told me that what I needed to do was go shopping and buy a little black frock.
‘Of course. For attending cocktail parties!’ I replied.
‘No, for attending funerals.’
Funny he should say that really. My second-oldest friend is Rita. Was Rita. Is Rita. She looked a little like a marsupial. I loved her. I still love her. She died of breast cancer one year ago.
Lovely Rita
Actually Rita didn’t die of breast cancer. She died of a broken heart. When she was diagnosed with cancer the first time, her husband helped her fight it and she even went on to have another child. But when the cancer came back, and this time it was in Rita’s bones, her husband just upped and left with their three daughters because he said he didn’t want their children to watch their mother die. I asked Rita to come and stay with us but she insisted on staying at her home to wait for her family to return. Admittedly her husband did visit her, but only the once, and that was to confirm that Rita had sorted out her legal will the way that he’d instructed.
Her husband never brought the girls back, and after three months of waiting, on a sunny end-of-summer day, Rita organised the gardener and the cleaner to make the house look wonderful and she went to the hairdresser to have her hair done nicely. Then when she came home she took a piece of rope to the girls’ netball hoop out by the three-car garage, and simply hanged herself.
I miss Rita. She was one of my closest friends in the world. I miss everything about her and her family, including the almost charming way her golden labrador used to try to have sex with my handbag. Sometimes I wish that I could go to Rita for advice because now that her life experience also includes death, I would imagine that Rita would have a bit more of an insight into the machinations of existence.
I didn’t really ask her for advice over the last years of her life because it is impossible to tell someone that you have an undiagnosable vacuous black-hole ache in your heart when they have a diagnosable and terminal ache inside every single cell of their body.
And besides, she was absolutely hopeless to ask for advice when she was alive because she’d had such limited life experience and could only really give counsel on how to remove a stain from the carpet, or ants from the pantry, or teach your budgie how to say ‘Greetings, welcome to our humble abode’ and then, with a flurry of its feathers, take a bow and hopefully not fall off its perch.
Sarah*
Mind you, my other friends aren’t much better when it comes to zone of happiness advice, even though they’re still alive. While Dezmond may be happy when he’s miserable, Sarah on the other hand is happy when she’s angry.
Sarah arrived in the country from Lebanon when she was eleven and I met her when we were thirteen, splashing around in the Budgewoi Hotel-Motel swimming pool. Well, actually I was splashing, and she was more sort of drowning because she’d stuffed her bikini bra with pebbles from the rock garden and was quickly sinking to the bottom of the pool.
Even in those days Sarah was angry. I remember that as soon as the pool attendant had brought her back to life, she accused him of using mouth-to-mouth as an excuse to give her a pash. Sarah says that her anger stems from the struggles she’s faced in her life, but lots of people think she’s just a cow. Personally I know she is a cow, but I also know that life can’t have been all that easy for her. This is not so much because of her lack of English when she arrived in the country, or the cultural shock entailed with immigration and the associated search for personal identity, but the fact that her parents have always been disappointed in her and never thought she was good enough. In fact, Sarah’s parents thought she was such an ugly baby that they made her wear her hooded garments backwards as a child, and physically swapped her with her cousin for the christening photos.
Sarah’s relationship with her parents has been exacerbated of late by her mother’s recent onset of dementia, which has led her not only to believe that her oven glove is a pet corgi but also insist on calling it Sarah. Add to this the fact that her father is also calling the oven glove Sarah, and he doesn’t have dementia, and I can tell you that Sarah has become a veritable Vesuvius. This year’s Christmas text from Sarah to her friends read To all my friends who sent me best wishes 4 last year, it did fuck all. For the new year could you please send either money, piss or petrol vouchers. Cheers.
Sarah really is too volatile to ask for advice unless you want to know how to get somebody knee-capped.
Toulah
Toulah is a friend I’ve treasured since we were teenagers, after we realised through a series of inaccurately delivered Valentine’s Day flowers that we were both going out with the same bloke at the same time. Unlike Sarah, Toulah tries to be happy but unfortunately unhappiness eludes her. At forty-five she’s still attempting to find her niche in life and has recently been fired as a professional masseuse after breaking a client’s collarbone. Apparently she developed the habit of chatting about her life while working and regretfully got onto the subject of her ex-husband, massaged harder and more aggressively as she spoke of his behaviour, and only stopped when she heard a snap. To be honest, we weren’t all that surprised because she was also fired from the volunteer telephone helpline not long ago after she was recorded saying to one suicidal caller, ‘I don’t know what you’re whinging about. You should try spending a day in my life.’
While we all agree that this was an entirely inappropriate thing to say to someone who has his or her head in the oven and is about to flick a switch, it is also sadly a bit true. Toulah married an unemployed arsehole thirteen years ago when she was a hugely successful businesswoman and has been in the process of divorcing him pretty well ever since. (Toulah says that she had originally put ‘Get divorced’ on her 1998 ‘to-do list’ but she put off actually doing it for a few years because she’d been ‘really busy’.)
Not many of us really thought that the marriage would last, particularly when her husband referred to Toulah in his wedding speech as his ‘first wife’. But nevertheless we have been surprised by his obsession with draining every cent from her in the divorce process ever since. Particularly considering his open acknowledgement to the divorce lawyers that his only financial contribution or otherwise to the marriage had been his Frequent Flyer point collection and his painting of the domicile’s
kitty-litter tray.
Anyway, the upshot is that Toulah has become good at giving advice but only when it’s in reference to decaying relationships.
‘You will never really know someone,’ she says, ‘until you have divorced them.’
‘Well, that doesn’t augur well for choosing a life partner,’ I reply.
‘No, you’re right,’ she continues. ‘I only wish it were possible to separate from someone and get divorced before you actually marry them.’
To be honest, I was initially kind of sad when Toulah got divorced because when she was miserably married it made me feel good about the fact that I was single. From a ‘dear friend’ perspective, I was devastated, of course, that she’d spent so many unhappy married years wandering around her house in socks and a brunch coat and listening to her husband’s flatulence, but from the perspective of an exhausted single mother of two with no love prospects on the horizon except for the hairy man who sits outside our local grocery store playing Barry Manilow medleys on a gum leaf, I have to confess that I was quietly chuffed that coupledom could so clearly be unsatisfying.
But then I got a call from Toulah, after she’d just become separated, and my perspective changed as we went for a walk with her new dog. (The new dog was a bulldog–rat cross called Neville, named after her ex-husband because he and the dog both dribbled. I took an immediate dislike to the dog, which, like a true male, only made it find me more attractive.)
Anyway, after Toulah and I had spent a couple of minutes theoretically hugging and kissing and saying hello but actually subtly checking out each other’s faces for visible signs of aging, Toulah told me that she was getting divorced. I can remember I paused to process this information. Was I sad? Was I disappointed? Was I relieved? I thought and I thought and then I almost choked to death trying to stifle my whoops of joy as I had a sudden epiphany and realised that I hadn’t lost a miserable married friend but gained a desperate single one, who could now do fabulously single-girl things with me like … like … like dress up to the nines, go out to an outrageous bar for expensive cocktails, get really smashed … and then see who has the slowest pulse.
Neville Gets Squashed
We hung out a lot and had a lot of fun. In fact, I spoke to Toulah the other day. I wanted to ask her advice about the ache in my heart and was upset to hear that her voice sounded unhappy once more.
‘What on earth’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘Neville’s dead,’ she replied. ‘He ran under a car.’
‘Um, well,’ I spluttered uncertainly, unsure but hoping she was talking about her ex-husband and not the dog with whom I’d started to develop a strange attachment. I spent a moment more searching desperately for a question I might ask that would point to man or beast, and finally asked, ‘Was he wearing anything special at the time?’
‘No, just the hat I gave him for his birthday.’
‘Oh, dear. Well, that’s very sad, but at least he won’t be pursuing the divorce settlement any more.’
‘Who cares about the divorce! I’m talking about my real one true love,’ she scolded. ‘I’m talking about Neville the dog!’
‘Oh,’ I replied, holding back the tears while trying to sound positive. ‘Um, well, at least he was a better investment than that dog you bought after your last relationship breakdown.’
‘What?’
‘You remember. Pablo. You got him at the pound, he cost you $200, you took him home, he fell sick, you rushed him to the animal hospital and then he died one week and $5000 later. It was actually quite hilarious in retrospect!’
There was quite a long pause during which the entire world was allowed to absorb the fact that I had apparently said something remarkably inappropriate.
Dum de dum.
Dum de dum.
Um.
Is that the wind I hear whistling in my ears, through the space where my brain should have been?
I could hear her cry. Boo! Or was she laughing? Yay! No, she was crying. Actually sobbing … yes, kind of hysterical.
‘Do you want me to bring you a sedative of some sort? Drugs, alcohol, one of my relatives?’
‘No, no. I want to cry.’
‘Well, the crying always makes your eyes look really blue,’ I murmured urgently, trying to be cheery.
‘What?’
‘Um … you know, in contrast to the bloodshot bits around them. Um.’
‘I want to cry because Neville’s death has changed my perspective and made me very happy,’ said Toulah, interrupting my garble. ‘He’s made me realise what’s important in my life.’
‘Oh, really,’ I said. ‘That’s fantastic.’
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘It is fantastic and I’ve decided to leave volunteer work and massage behind and concentrate on the theatre.’
‘Do you have anything particular in mind?’ I asked, somewhat flabbergasted.
‘Well, actually, you’ll be amazed, but I’ve already landed a part.’
‘Wow. That’s incredible,’ I enthused. ‘Are you acting or singing or both?’
‘Neither. I’ve got a part in The Vagina Monologues. I have to wander around the audience during interval and dance for them like I’m a vulva.’
I decided it would be selfish to raise the issue of my heart at this moment and instead clapped and whooped while Toulah showed me her dance, which looked at times like an eggbeater and a prancing cat, but never like a dancing vulva.
Another Failed Job Application
After several days of unemployment and my increasingly throbbing heartache I wondered whether I should ring Sarah and offer to work for her as a cleaner or just sell some of my vital organs on eBay. I asked my daughter, Tadpole, what she thought I should do and she suggested that I buy her some new shoes. So then I contemplated ringing the Kids Helpline – to see what I could do about my kids – but I rang my mother instead.
I rang for my mother’s advice at six o’clock in the afternoon because she’s often a bit tiddly between five-thirty and six and I thought this might be the moment when she’d see life from my perspective.
‘Hi there. It’s me. I’m just wondering if you think that I should get a job as a cleaner or sell my vital organs.’
‘Who is this?’ my mother replied.
‘It’s me.’
‘Who?’
‘Your offspring.’
‘Which one? I have one hundred offspring.’ (You see, I told you she had a propensity to exaggerate/be creative – i.e. lie.)
‘It’s me. Gretel,’* I said.
And then my mother hung up.
So I prepared to ponder life as I slumped in the chair that I inherited at the death of my grandparents. I used to find it comforting to sit in this chair because I thought the chair smelt like my grandma. But nowadays the chair is not quite so soothing because I realise it actually just smells like cat wee.
I Wish I was an Athlete
As I sat there, with my fingers blocking my nose, I realised that the situation was really beginning to make me wish that I’d followed a proper conservative career path after leaving school instead of the crazy vulnerability of fiction writing and television. It made me wish that I’d spent my life as a professional athlete, or more specifically as a runner because when the gun goes off a runner just has to run as fast as they possibly can, and the fastest person wins, no matter what other races they’ve lost in the past, or how big their boobs happen to be.
My Friend is a Typo
Speaking of boobs, it occurred to me during this past week that my friends might get together at some point and hold an intervention to assist with my existential dilemma. But as time has passed I’m beginning to suspect that it’s highly unlikely that the group will work together because none of them seem to like one another. On second thoughts, that’s actually not true. One of my friends likes all of my friends but I don’t actually like him.
His name is Adan but lots of people call him Adam because they think that his name is a typo. My friends and I ca
ll him Jimmy because the name Adan makes him sound like he has superpowers and Jimmy is the nickname he gives to his left testicle (which is apparently his favourite). I used to like him – hell, I used to date him – but that was before I actually got to know him. My initial attraction to Jimmy was based on the fact that he appeared to be ‘nice’ and he entered my life at a time when I was trying to break the cycle of dating rogues and vagabonds. I should have known better because I had tried to date a ‘nice guy’ once before and thought that I was hooking up with the strong silent intellectual type but then found out that he was just dumb.
But Jimmy was different. He seemed to be kind, compassionate and thoughtful, and professed to be entirely sensitive to my womanly needs. It was only later that I realised Jimmy was pretending to be a feminist so that I’d be a feminist right back at him and pay my half of the dinner bills.
In retrospect I guess there were signs from the start that he wasn’t completely normal, and a simple example of this was his habit of eating his breakfast toast every morning while standing under the shower.
In retrospect, too, I think the first time he began to show his true colours was the day he mentioned that he occasionally liked to wear high heels and answer to the name Porky Kennelworth. The next day I heard him tell Toulah that it didn’t really matter what she did with her life as long as she wasn’t fat. And only a week ago Sarah’s replacement cleaner read his tarot cards and when they came up ‘sexuality’ and ‘time alone’, Jimmy announced that he assumed this meant that he should masturbate more.
Jimmy is a dickwit. And yet he’s in my gang of friends, which means that he’s my friend too.
Jimmy doesn’t want to be my boyfriend, he just wants to be my friend, but he’d still like us to be able to have sex together, so I try to discourage this by only ever giving him one of those A-shaped hugs whereby you embrace so your heads are close but your genitals are about a kilometre apart. In fact, we had a talk about my lack of desire to have sex with him just recently while sitting in his car. I asked for support on my decision and he started to rub my leg and moan. When I pointed this out Jimmy apologised and said that he thought my leg was the gear stick.
The Night my Bum Dropped Page 5