Don't tell your parents

My advice to you is this: Don’t tell your parents that you and your girlfriend have broken up.

Just don’t.

Telling your parents that you’ve broken up with a long-term partner is impossible, because they won’t really hear what you’re saying. Try and get a sibling to do it for you or better still just never tell them and let her gradually slip from their memories.

It’s not that they won’t understand, or they don’t care, it’s just that they are simply unable to comprehend what you’re saying. They don’t get it. It’s not in their nature to hear adult problems coming from their children. The very thought that you might be stuffing things up for yourself just as royally as they did freaks them out. To them you’ll always be a kid, not a thirty-something slacker. It’s boring; it’s frustrating, but it’s much safer and easier for all concerned that it stays that way too.

Remember what happened when your backpack was stolen in Athens and you were left with nothing but the clothes you were wearing.

Beep beep beep

Mum: Hello

You: Hi mum.

Mum: Oh, who is it?

You: Me mum, Bill-

Mum: Oh, but you’re in Greece –

You: Mum the money’s going to run out, can I –?

Mum: Oh, OK, I’ll just get your father.

You: Mum!

Dad: Hello son.

You: Hi Dad, listen can I –

(Mum in background: “Ask him what time it is?”)

Dad: Your mother wants to know what time it is.

You: It’s 3am, dad can I just –

Dad: 3am love.

(Mum in background: what day is it over there?)

Dad: What love–?

You: I can hear her Dad. It’s Tuesday.

Dad: He says Tuesday.

You: Dad, have you still got my credit card details-?

Dad: Yes I’ll just go and get them.

He puts the phone down.

You: No da-!

Beep beep beep.

The phone cut out and there went your last chance of having them wire money to you and have you ever tried to sell a watch in a Greek pawnshop?

Exactly the same thing will happen when you tell them that you and your ex, the one they thought you’d be with forever, have broken up.

No matter what you say, your mum will at first just not hear it. You’ll have to say it over and over again until it finally sinks in, and when it does, look out, because things just start to get very weird.

One of two very disturbing things will happen: either she’ll think it’s your fault and that something you did must have pissed off that sweet girl who’s been putting up with your irritating habits for years, “and does that mean I’ll not see any grandchildren?” or she’ll suddenly be so scathing about your ex that you’ll be left stunned and bewildered, wondering what she’s really been thinking all this time when she’s been offering her a slice of sponge cake and a cup of tea every third sunday evening of teh month.

You’ll finally see the non-mum side of your mum. You’ll realize, perhaps for the first time ever that she’s actually a person, that she’s got feelings, and that she’s just as fucked up as you. She’ll see you in a new light too. She’ll see the potential, idealised her-perfect-son version of you replaced by the actual and much less appealing real you; she’ll realize that her little boy is just as messed up as she is. You’ll go past the polite conversation and pleasantries that pass for much interfamilial communication and hurtle straight into a full on mano a (wo)mano slug fest, in which your mum pulls off the lovely oven gloves you bought her for Christmas when you were ten and goes bare knuckle, toe-to-toe with you.

She’ll treat you like an adult. She’ll want details; she’ll ask questions; she might even ask you about your sex life; she’ll want to know were you shagging around; was she? She’ll get upset and your father will stand up and put his hands in his pockets and look out the window humming a marching tune while you try and comfort your mum, who just keeps dabbing her eyes, holding up her hands and repeating, “I’m fine, I’m fine. It’s just a bit of a shock.”

Pretty soon though she’ll pull herself together and head off to the kitchen to get the dinner on.

When she comes back in, eyes red-rimmed, she’ll pretend that she’s, “fine really,” but you’ll see it in her face – she can’t hide it - and every time you look at her you’ll wish there was some way you could make her stop worrying, and so her pain - which is really your pain - becomes yours again, only doubled, and so you clam up, and you can’t tell her anything more. You become testy, touchy, and of course this just adds another layer to her unease, and every time she so much as touches you, you can feel her anxiety sucking at you like a baby at a tit, and now you’re the one worried. You feel like the parent and you wish there was some way you could make things better for her, but you’re just not right enough in the head to cope with that. You’re not selfless enough to cope with someone else’s load. You’re so self obsessed, so sorry for yourself that there’s just no room for anyone else, and even though you know you’re being a silent, moody arsehole to the two people in the world who are truly willing to listen to your grief you can’t stop.

And when mum finally clears away the plates, and you’re left alone with dad, who, after a suitable silence, asks you if you watched the match yesterday, you’re still grumpy, but you’re on familiar territory and you wish you’d just told him instead. Because he’ll be gutted, he’ll be shocked and he’ll eat his insides out with worry just as much as your mum, but he’ll do it quietly and without any fuss. Like her, he’ll lie awake all that night, wondering whether you’ll ever find happiness. He’ll spend silent moments remembering how you used to be such a happy little boy, or maybe he’ll look back and remember that he always worried about your state of mind, about whether you were the kind of person who’d sail through life without any troubles, or whether you were always the type to trip himself up or to get tripped up.

But he won’t let you see that. The most he’ll say is, “Ah well,”. Dads know better than to say any more than that.

Heal my arse

Sitting slumped on the couch looking at a book titled: ‘You Can Heal Your Life’. Oh yeah? Then how come I haven’t even managed a shave since Thursday week when she moved her washing machine out? Not that shaving and washing machines have much in common, although both are obviously concerned with hygiene, speaking of which I haven’t done any washing since then either.

Note to self: must buy a washing machine, or more underwear, and considering that even a basic Whirlpool costs at least $500 and that underpants are a buck a pair at Bi Lo I could just buy enough jocks to last well into next year and still come out ahead, although the thought of washing several hundred pairs of underpants at the laundromat all at once mid next year, does not appeal, nor does the idea of storing what may well amount to several dozen kilos of moldering undies over that period. Come to think of it where would I even store the clean ones? I haven’t got a wardrobe anymore (That was the first thing she’d taken. There was no way she was going to store her things in plastic bags. ) and so I’d more than likely keep them in the plastic bags in which I bring them home, that is unless I can score a few cardboard boxes from the greengrocer.

Unless I buy a wardrobe.

Although not buying a wardrobe would save another couple of hundred bucks which means that I could buy more underwear, perhaps enough to last for up to two years without having to do a wash, mind you that does compound the soiled undies storage problem quite a bit, although if I factor in the saving on laundry detergent, I’m still ahead. One slight problem however would be explaining the enormous stacks of plastic bags/boxes full of either clean or soiled underwear should Gillian come back, or hope against hope, I should actually manage to bring another girl home.

Girls just don’t understand these things and no amount of explaining about how much financial sense the situation makes would compensate either for the stench (which is sure to be mighty once I get a good six months into the project, which, for ease of communication, shall henceforth be known as Project Underpants)...

Double wow.I just Googled Project Underpants and there's actually a site with that name. Can't believe it. Some Charity underpant thing that's actually been happening at teh same time as my underpant (soiled) collection has been building - spooky.

...or for the mind boggling sight of several hundred pairs of underpants in various states of decay. Unless of course I was to spend the money I’d saved on the woman in question (ignoring for the moment the obvious problem that such an act of generosity would render the whole project meaningless) in the form of a gift, a washing machine perhaps - redundant of course in Gillian’s case as she already has one, hence the need for Project Underpants in the first place - and perhaps to grand a gift to bestow upon any other potential girl I might bring home.

Not that she’d be a potential girl in any way other than she’d be a potential girlfriend: in all other ways she’d be a fully-realised girl.

Mmmmmm, “fully realised,” doesn’t that sound sexy to you or is it just me? Soft focus film of a bouncy, bubbly girl gamboling in a meadow, like in this old Cadbury Flake ad* happy, smiling and willing to do just about anything for a bite of your chocolate bar…

…Paris Hilton, or Vanessa Hudgens, or any other nude celebrity…

… such as Pamela Anderson…

…not that I’m a Pamela Anderson fan, I’m not, well I wasn’t when I was in a relationship anyway. Like every other well adjusted able-to-commit-male I was appalled by her brazenly, inflated, and augmented sexuality, but now that I’m single, well to hell with that. I’m on the Net all night like all the other single guys looking for free porn, dodgy nude celeb videos and the like, as thankfully, the computer is mine, unlike almost everything else in this apartment, or rather formerly in this apartment. At least the new emptiness, which is now this apartment, gives me plenty of space to work on Project Underpants, all of which I’m sure to need if I’m going to store all those jocks – let’s say between 500 and 600 pairs.

You see that’s where men and women are different.

Forget this Marsand Venus stuff. The difference between men and women is that if a man walked into a woman’s apartment, on a first date, and saw that she had several hundred pairs of underpants he’d think, woohoo let’s party, unless of course they were all Bonds Cottontails, in which case he might be a little underwhelmed, but still not perturbed enough to do anything that might cause the woman in question, fully-realised or otherwise, to ask him to leave, whereas a woman confronted by my stash of undies, no matter how sexy they might be, would run screaming out of my apartment, with me following her, yelling, “Was it something I said?”.

And then all the neighbours would come out to see what’s going on and as I’m standing there in the corridor they’d take a look in through the open front door and see all those boxes and bags full of undies stacked neatly, labelled in date order, used on the left, unused on the right, and suddenly that nice couple who had Gillian and I over for dinner before the break up would be looking embarrassed and, if the truth be told, a little scared, and I’d know I’d never be tasting that cheeky little Rutherglen red, he promised to drop round, and as the other neighbours were shielding their kids I’d turn, crushed and condemned, and make my way back in to Project Underpants, and then the next morning there’d be a book in my letter box titled You Can Heal Your Life and I’d think, oh yeah? Then how come I haven’t even had a shave since last Thursday? And I’d open it and there’d be a note inside and it’d be from Gillian, saying that she’s really worried about me and that maybe I needed help, and I’d know right there and then that that book could tell me nothing, and that if I was ever going to avoid that fateful trip to Bi Lo I’d have to throw it away and work it out for myself.

* I found that ad while I was looking for this one, which is hilarious. For soem reason I remember this being raunchy, when in actual fact it's just very silly.

I can't stop eating and drinking

Man cannot live on bread alone, but if it’s baked thin and crispy and is covered with cheese and salami he’ll give it a red hot go...(I've already done that line, I know that, bt it kind of introduces the next bit nicely)...

He can, however, survive for an awful long time on a combination of vodka and misery.  Sounds like the title of a self help book for boozy twats – and maybe that’s what I should be writing – but its not.  It’s the truth.  You can do it, but you have to work hard to do so.

Vodka is pure.  It has no taste - except for Finlandia which tastes smoky as it’s filtered through charcoal - but it does burn.  It cleanses and strips away everything, even pain, leaving in its wake nothing but scars and ash and rawness.

Misery on the other hand is filthy.  It sits on your skin like coalminer’s grime, abrasively rubbing itself into every pore, clogging them up until they fester and fill with pus, capped with 

You can live on vodka alone, just not for a very long time.

That doesn’t mean you should eat like a pig, although if that works for you then I say go for it brother.  To paraphrase Nietzsche: that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, , and if gorging yourself makes you feel better then who am I to argue with that?  Mind you Nietzsche was a complete looney.  Very strong – legend has it he could crush one of those old steel beer cans with one hand – but stark raving mad in the end, so perhaps we shouldn’t pay so much attention to him.

Maybe we could update what he said though: That which doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger, unless it contains over 50% saturated fat in which case although it may make you stronger, it will also make you a tad lardy too.

I feel sick.

Hi Eva

When I set this blog up I meant to register the address 'note to self', but I ended up registering 'note to elf' by mistake, because I was pissed when I did it. I've been thinking about changing it back somehow  to the address I originally wanted, but some vegetarian has already got that, so I can't.

Tehn I got to thinking about about note to elf and I think I like it. It's a fuck up, it's unexpected, it's wrong, but somehow it works. It's like I'm writing to a mysterious little fairy person, to someone not quite real, someone made up, someone questionable. Right now then, elf sounds more like me than self does I'm not sure who I am, who I want to be or what to say, to myself or to anyone else for that matter.

I'min a place right now that doesn't even feel real. maybe I an an elf. But which sort?

Not this sort.

More like the above, but without a coat hanger wrapped round my head.

Note to self sounds like it should be very serious and considered too. That vegetarian site is certainly a lot more fair dinkum than I intend to be.

Looking at that site she, it's run by a girl called Eva, starts off by saying that she doesn't think anyone will ever read her blog. I don't think anyone will ever read mine either. Except for maybe for Eva. It's never going to rank high enough in search engines for people to find it and the only person ever likely to stumble on to it accidentlally is Eva, if she types teh name of her blog incorrectly. I hope she does that one day and i hope she finds this post and I hope it freaks her out a little, in a good way. At least she'll know that someone has read her blog. Maybe she'll post an hello Bill message on her blog.

Teh weird thing is she set her blog up just a couple of weeks ago, so if I'd gotten onto this a while back I could have had that name after all.

Dieting Through Your Break Up Hell

BEFORE:

Health is not something you tend to think about too much when you’ve had your heart broken, unless of course you’re a woman, in which case you’d probably be: Dieting Through Your Break Up Hell, dropping dresssizes like hot potatoes, buying crop tops galore, getting your hair done, and your nails while you’re at it. Maybe a facial too. If you’re a man however, health is definitely not on your agenda, bu tit should be.

For man cannot live by bread alone, although if it is spread very thinly, covered with anchovies, tomatoes and cheese, baked to a crispy delight and comes with a six pack, he’ll give it a red hot go, and that’s where the problem lies.

You see, the heartbroken male doesn’t understand nutrition, nor does he recognize the usual food groups: carbohydrate, protein, muesli, cabbage and the other two. To him there are only four food groups: fried, sweet, beer and pizza and as long as he consumes at least one portion from each every day e.g. one bucket of chips, one packet of Tim Tams, one pizza and one six pack, he thinks he’ll be OK – besides there’s no one there to tell him not to anymore so why shouldn’t he enjoy himself for once?

Very soon however, this temporary lapse into Homer Simpson-like living becomes the norm. There’s no one at home to tell him that lounging around the house all day in nothing but his underpants eating ice-cream by the litre is a little less than a good idea, and when he is mixing with other people he’s only ever with his mates and do you think they’re going to tell him that he shouldn’t be ordering a pot for each hand? I don’t think so.

So while his ex is botoxing and step-classing her way to tighter buttocks, his arse is spreading faster than bird flu in a chook shed.

Before you can say, "where's my Mou mou?" You end up doing this:
AFTER:

Not that he’d notice.

The newly single man never notices these things. He is invincible: a predator. Lock up your daughters daddy; there’s a real man on the loose. He is a cock for hire; a blade; a lover; and he is also the proud wearer of the biggest pair of beer goggles the world has ever seen, except in this case they’re not focused on that frumpy girl in the corner, they’re focused on himself and he’s getting better looking round after round, day after day, night after night.

“I can eat and drink whatever I like,” he tells himself, “because I have a high metabolism. I just burn it up, I do, I just burn it up, plus I jog and I go to the gym”. And it’s true to an extent. Not the bit about the metabolism: who really knows about that crap, but he does go to the gym and jog, albeit about once every six months, and he’s still convinced that the one month’s intensive exercise he did back when he first noticed his middle spreading years ago will carry him through. He thinks it lingers.

But they know it doesn’t.

They don’t tell him though because they’re his mates. They think it’ll pass, that it’s just a phase, and anyway he’s a good laugh when he’s drunk. They don’t have to see him stumble out of the kitchen in his underpants, unwashed and unshaved with a can of creamy rice in one hand, a beer in the other and a bag of salt and vinegar chips clamped between his teeth, heading back to bed and to the TV to watch yet another footy marathon.

They don’t have to do anything - they're his mates.

Another year of the bloody Dogs

Why can’t I just choose to barrack for a successful team instead of constantly putting myself through this agony?

The answer is nobody chooses to barrack for Footscray.  You’re geographically marooned out there - you have no choice no matter how many bloody preliminary finals you lose.

I remember asking myself that question in 1996 when the club finished second from the bottom, managing to beat only one team all season: Fitzroy that year’s wooden spooners.

That was the year immortalised in the film Year of the Dog, a documentary made by someone who spent a year with the club, and one which should be compulsory viewing for anybody contemplating supporting any of life’s more unlikely causes. This clip from the movie shows you what the club was like at that time - Tehy just didn't know how to win. Watch at 2:27 for the famous "I'll spew up!" line form Plough.

It’s a film full of pathos, of sadness, of struggle and of disintegration.  It’s a film in which the weak, and sometimes the strong, are put to the sword.  Plots are hatched, backs are stabbed and careers are smashed.  It’s compulsive viewing because it tells the truth.

Good does not triumph over evil in that film.

I watched Year of the Dog with all the fellas the night before Footscray played in that horrible Preliminary Final against Adelaide, the one which, had they won, would have delivered the dream Grand Final featuring football’s perennial losers: Footscray and St Kilda.  Everybody’s second favourite teams, cute, lovable and harmless, Except for last night - bloody Saints.

As it was they squandered a huge lead and went down by two points. Adelaide after having an average season went on to win that flag, and the next one, despite the fact that Footscray, in those two years was far and away the most attractive and successful team in the competition.

I remember we all sat there in shock as we watched that film rolled on and on - had that season really been that bad?

We’d blocked it out of our memories already.  Each loss, each extraordinarily large defeat was somehow new and perhaps even more shocking in the reliving, as we were ten, a mere year later, basking in the unlikely glory of being Preliminary Finalists.

it's no big deal Gillian

Eight days after you moved out, Gillian - the very next Saturday to be exact - three people tried to pick me up.  This is whathappened.

Dan dragged me along to this fancy law firm do.  I arrived at the party feeling that peculiar mix of confidence and self-loathing I feel when I’m wearing a suit.  The place was crawling with classy types, which didn’t help, but with the words: “You say you like to dance, I think I'll take a chance, Ooh, baby, maybe it's time for romance,” from the immortal classic, Ladies Room, (From the album Rock ‘n’Roll Over. Yes I know you hate Kiss.) tripping through my head, I thought bugger being a sad tosser, tonight I’m going to be fabulous.  And I was.  So much so that three of the classy ones thought I was interesting enough to want to go out with. Three of them.In teh one night.

One stunner of about 30, an older woman who, had I met her when I was about 20, could have fulfilled all my older woman fantasies and a young male article clerk, who as he was leaving, pulled me to one side and whispered, “ I don’t suppose you’re at all gay, are you?”

Of course I didn’t follow through on any of them, although I slipped the girls’ cards in to my wallet.  I was still too raw and, having never been great at one night stands, didn’t fancy a quick one, besides having been single only a week, bachelorhood hadn’t set in properly yet, but it does tell you something doesn’t it?

“What precisely does it tell you Bill?” you’d say.

Well it tells me, that unless they were absolute desperadoes, and unless Dan paid them to make a fuss of me, three people, three totally separate strangers, on the same night wanted me, which at the time, made your not wanting me seem a lot less of a big deal than it did beforehand.