darryn

Last Saturday marked two years since Kirsten and I broke up. I have been single since then, the longest time that I have ever been single. My plan was to use this as an excuse to go out with my married friends, they would be sure to get a leave pass to support me, their ’sad’ friend. Unfortunately, I forgot about this until the night before when Lydia asked me about it.

The night before, Friday night, I actually went out with Kirsten to have a few drinks and see Black Sheep at the Dendy in Newtown. We had a drink beforehand at the Townie, where she dropped the bomb: she is getting married! Awesome timing, after all, she broke up with me because she was never going to get married. Strangely, I have not been at all upset about this. I merely used the opportunity to tease her.

After the movie, Kip and I headed into Chinatown, where we met Hugo and had a tasty midnight dinner at Haymarket Chinese. This is a cheap and tasty restaurant near the corner of Liverpool and Sussex, and Markiel claims it is his favourite Chinese establishment.

Kip went home, and Hugo and I got a cab to the Paddington Inn to meet Kads and Megatron. It was 1AM at this point and we were not allowed in. What do you do when you get denied entry somewhere? That’s right: you go to the Courthouse.

The Courthouse is a pub on the corner of Bourke and Oxford Streets. It is patronised almost entirely by society’s rejects and, as such, is never boring. It was just Hugo and I. As I walked in a dodgy looking bikie style fellow was blocking the pathway, so I said “excuse me” and slid past. His friend said something, but I didn’t quite catch it.

We found a table, and had been there for less than 5 minutes before a slore invited me to sit with her. The slores weren’t very exciting to talk to, and we were still on our first beer when the King Bikie came over, stood behind me and gently placed his hand on my shoulder. He growled an order into my ear, that a dwarf on a nearby table was his friend, and I had to look after him. He then went and did the same thing to Hugo, who put down his beer and said “let’s go”.

The final stop was the Macquarie Hotel, because I had to introduce Hugo to the Bavarian Red Lager that they brew there. A very tasty drop.

On Saturday night, my actual anniversary, I went out with Walking Rek. After the customary few in Newtown (at the Marly), we cabbed it straight to Spectrum, arriving early so that we could actually catch the bands. We missed the first artist so, for us, Laura Imbruglia was up first. I am not a reviewer so I won’t elaborate, but she was funny and personal, and I liked the music too. Next up were the Lucksmiths, who didn’t really do it for me. After the bands finished, Spectrum turned into a club called P*A*S*H, and this night was the 200th P*A*S*H. We had a bit if a dance and Rek kept picking out girls for me to slore onto. She has no idea what my taste is, at all. We got into a disagreement on this subject and she grabbed her coat and stormed off.

Luckily, my new friend Amelia was already on her way. I met her at Spectrum the week before, when she opened with the best possible line anyone could ever use: “Is that shirt from glarkware.com?”. It was, and it turns out that we share many interests i.e. she is cool. We are now poke buddies. On facebook.

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I had a great Christmas with (half) my family. My best sister, Michelle, was the host and she put on a great spread. Sampson, my beautiful 16 month-old nephew, was the centre of attention - the day was really all about him. He loved it and has already worked out that he can control us: all he has to do is clap his hands and all nearby adults immediately join in, including me. My contribution for the day, apart from the general awesomeness of my mere presence, was that I cooked a stamppot. I don’t think it was the best one I ever made but, of all the food served, the stamppot was the first to run out. Sampson loves it. I am glad. My stamppot kicks the arse of any Dutch stamppot.

On Boxing Day afternoon I sat down for a bit of coding that I had been thinking about for a while. It is nice to have an opprtunity to geek out alone without the nagging responsibility of client work. It was not to be, however, as walkingrek called me and invited me to her house. She was about to crack open a bottle of wine that I had bought for her the other day and wondered if I might join her.

Fifteen minutes later I was in Stanmore with walkingrek, sitting on her porch in the sun and enjoying a nice drink. During my Christmas shopping with Stacey I had been in a Reject Shop and bought for myself a safety baseball/softball bat and ball. They were in my car.

We walked up to a local schoolyard for a game, it was great fun. We both kicked arse. When retrieving the ball from one of Bek’s awesome hits we both noticed a “graf” wall, and it was imperative that I take a photo. God bless the camera phone - it takes shit photos but at least it is always with me.

It is safe now to publish that Bek has asked me to move in with her. It is safe because I don’t have to worry about my landlord finding out I am looking, and pre-emptively evicting me. I don’t have to worry about this because yesterday both Sonia and I were kicked out of the house. I was told in a “oh, by the way…” fashion, with much less seriousness than if I had wasted electricity by leaving the hall light on whilst in the bathroom. Sonia was told by SMS. The news had no emotional impact on me at all, except perhaps a feeling of relief. Melvin’s reign of terror is over.

I have been hanging out with walkingrek quite a bit lately, reconnecting. It has been good. We are both grownups now and it makes a difference. We have always been very close, had a special understanding that others lack. Perhaps we interact best on the dancefloor, unspoken. We both see the same things and look at each other at the same times. I can mess with her without words. We like very similar music and feel it, I think more deeply than the average suburban punter. It is good to have her as a friend again.

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[update 6AM] Fuck it, I am writing little summaries

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After the wedding I met up with JohnBoy. Our plan was to go to this dance party at the Metro, we hadn’t heard of the DJ but hotness was there so I was motivated. We got to the Metro at about midnight and they wouldn’t let us in, because it was closed: the performance was over. wtf? A quick googling from home now reveals that Josh Pyke is not a DJ at all, but a performer of folk music. Mark and Tracy, being soft, had piked. It was just John and I, a boy’s night on the town.

Our first stop was Bar Ace for a couple of quick warmup drinks (actually we tried the RSL and 3 Blind Monkeys but they were both inaccessible). We decided to check out Home. We had only walked a few hundred metres when the first event of the night occurred. We were on Liverpool Street, near George (Spanish Quarter) when a brawl erupted directly across the road from us. One of the groups grabbed a guy and threw him into traffic. He was hit by a car. The fight kept going until a cop arrived and basically saturated all their faces with capsicum spray. This stopped them a bit but they weren’t screaming with pain or anything, which is what I would have expected. Within 30 seconds at least 5 plainclothes cops just magically appeared out of the crowd and started rounding up and restraining the brawlers. Meanwhile the guy on the road kept trying to get up but collapsed every time. His mate dragged him to the side of the street. Not good. It was the sort of thing you would expect to see in America, guys lying face down on the sidewalk with their hands bound behind their backs.

As an aside, there have been recent moves to arm Aussie police with tazers. A tazer would have been almost useless to the first cop as there were maybe eight guys fighting. At least with the capsicum spray he was able to subdue a lot of them from a reasonably safe distance (The spray comes out in a stream like silly string, not a mist like mortein). If they get tazers they should keep the capsicum spray as well.

The show over, we continued on to Home. The bouncer at the door asked us if we knew what was on that night, and then told us that it was techno and rock. We wanted a dance so we paid our entry fee and walked into an empty club. We went up to the mezzanine level and found all of the punters. The small room (with all the glass) was full of sad kids watching an emo band and subtly nodding their heads. Maybe that is how emos (sp?) dance. I did a quick scan but it was clear that the place was dead so we left. On the way out John tried to get our money back but they refused since we had been “warned” that it would suck.

I suggested we try Pontoon/Wallaby Bar as Josephine might be working and I would be able to mess with her head at work. We went over and found a long queue, so the plan quickly changed to what we always knew it would be; what it always is. Chinese Laundry.

We ate some cookies on the way over there but they didn’t taste very nice. Once inside we immediately knew we had come to the right place. The crowd was jumping and it had that packed-but-not-too-packed, low-roofed atmosphere that I love. To the bar. Whilst John was buying I received a photo from Bunni who was also out and looking good. I responded in kind. The lines are getting blurred, she is starting to exist in my Real Life.

The place was a sausage fest, maybe 85% male, but I didn’t care because I was there to dance. And dance I did, mostly in the cave room where the music was better. Even though the population was skewed male John and I were always surrounded by girls. Another boost to the ego on a day of such boosts. A girl with a black and white striped top on kept brushing past me and running her hand over my bum. There was one group that kept coming back to us all the time. They were five, and all good looking. Their queen was obviously hot and was always encircled with guys (often including John :P) but it was the tall (also hot) one who was interested in me. Like I said, I was there to dance but she mistook my aloofness for ignorance and decreased the subtlety of her advances. There was a lot of accidental touching and bumping. She was very good at playing the dancefloor game and it was a lot of fun.

At 4AM the lights came on and it was time to leave. I was talking to one of the staff, asking for suggestions on where to go next when stripy walked past. He said “see that girl, she’s wasted”. I already knew. He suggested that we go to Tank or the club above Empire in Kings Cross, and then gave me a handful of two-for-one Laundry tickets. Despite reservations, we decided to walk to Tank, arming ourselves with Powerade for the journey. We weren’t allowed into Tank because John wasn’t cool enough (heheh) so we cabbed it to the Cross.

Once at the Cross we realised that we had both lost our dancing legs so went in search of a place to have a quiet beer. Every place had a queue, even Barons. Barons’ licence must have changed because it is now a condition of entry that you have a meal before proceeding to the bar.

Unable to introduce John to the pleasures of the dodgiest dive bar in Sydney, and without the promised backgammon, we went into a sports bar named Sports Bar. We had a beer and I went to buy the next round. When I got back to the table we had a new friend. Brett is a some kind of horse guy and mentioned several times that he works for Bart Cummings. He lives in Newcastle, is 38 years old and not really happy. He was either drunk or illiterate because he was unable to write his phone number down and I had to write it for him. I don’t know why he wanted to give us his phone number.

At about 5:30AM the bar shut and the sky was lightening but we were still having a good time and decided to kick on. I remembered when I lived in Surry Hills, all the times I used to drink with Greg after tweekin. We drank at the Crown, it was open 24 hours a day. We got in a cab. We get to the Crown and they were shut, but the guy inside recommended a bar near Central. We started walking, went past my old house on Marlborough Street, it still looks the same after seven years. We got to the bar and we were not allowed in due to being drunk, even though we were not.

We cabbed it back to our starting point, Bar Ace. We met some randoms and played a few games of pool with them. We won every game, because we rock. Then I was home by eight. What a top night, lots of fun. John is an excellent partner in crime.

[update 9 October]: I just got the Josh Pyke album and it is alright. I don’t want to have his babies but I was surprised to find that I knew one of the songs. Don’t want to listen to it too much because my testosterone levels will decrease too much.

[update 9 Oct]: yep, they’re decreasing. Soon I will be listening to Snow Patrol like craigeaux

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