52 Days

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

The End

        I had tickets to a music festival over New Years, but after that Christmas bender the thought of going away and partying again for another few days made me sick. I ended up working a glassy shift at The Workers on New Years Eve and having a few drinks before the year changed, so if you want to be pedantic, I guess I failed the challenge. Rach came to meet me at The Workers after midnight. We went home together, and it took me another month to break up with her.
        No one was mad at me for being a fuckhead, they were all used to it, but it felt like the whole point of going to Melbourne was to be different to who I was before I'd left. Going on a 4 day bender, sleeping with an ex, insecurity and paranoia – that wasn't different, it was exactly the same. I committed to Melbourne, and threw myself into stand up, and it was only five years later that I went back for Christmas 2017 and could finally see my hometown with different eyes.
        You've got to go away to come back.

Day 52 - December 25th

        In the three days from when I got to Adelaide I'd managed to catch up with all of the main groups of people in my life: The Lost Boys, The Melbourne Boys, Phil, and my family. I got home to my parents' empty house from Phil's housewarming on the morning of Christmas Eve and went to sleep. When I woke up I could barely move.
        My family had all gone down to our holiday house in Marion Bay, a three-hour drive from Adelaide. I'd planned to head down there with Lucy and Phil, but after his housewarming, Phil decided he wanted to stay in Adelaide and spend Christmas with his family. Lucy didn't want to go just the two of us after we'd slept together two nights earlier, she said it'd be weird.
        I spent Christmas Day 2012 alone on a couch at my parents' place watching movies on my laptop. At one point I spilled my pint glass full of water across the keyboard, and thought it might be broken. That would have been so perfectly awful, I'm laughing at the memory of my terror as I write this.
        I stayed on that couch for 36 hours. Every now and then I'd try to vomit into a bucket, and I kept up a few conversations with people online with people I'd barely spoken to before or since. The kind of people who are up for an earnest chat while they sit in the bored haze of Christmas, I told them I was sad, and we talked vaguely about life, and adjustments.
        My parents' mate Fitzy came by in the afternoon with some food from his place and I meekly thanked him. Also Lucy came by, but I was upset with her for not wanting to come to Marion Bay, and upset with myself for putting partying ahead of my family. I cried bitter, lonely tears after she left. I can't exactly recall when, but I remember the sobbing being painful.

The next day my younger cousin Ian drove us up to Marion Bay, and I spent a night with him and the rest of my family before we jumped back in his car and drove back. Twenty-minutes into the return journey I realised I'd left the DVD of 'Community' my Mum had got me for Christmas back at the place, and after enduring a few minutes of my sulking Ian turned the car around and we drove back to get it in silence. When we finally spoke again he asked me about comedy, and what I thought my plan might be. I tried to sound serious, talked about what I saw as my flaws – selfishness, lack of control and direction. We hugged when he dropped me off, and I caught the bus back to Melbourne the next day.

Click here to read the last part - The End

Day 51 - December 23rd

        Phil had just moved into a new place and this night was his housewarming. I had a great chat with James (Brodie's brother) about how I thought I might have to break up with Rachel when I got back to Melbourne. She'd come back from her trip just in time for us to have one quick catch-up at my place before I left, but even after just that it was clear, if I was honest with myself, that I wasn't in it the same as I was before she left. I padded around Phil's backyard in the afternoon, thinking about what I'd have to do when I got back to Melboune. I drank by myself for the most part while everyone else was busy organising things for the party, making plans and calling people to see where they were at. I didn't want to wait.
        I was was tired from two days of partying, and at one point I passed out on a couch. When I woke up someone had drawn all over my face in black marker. I was feeling insecure after the gum thing, and took the drawing as another attempt at specifically and deliberately disrespecting me, so I got all upset and stumbled around the party asking people if they'd done it. Nobody knew anything.
        I was sure it was Brodie, but no one else seemed to care. I let it ruin my night, and went to sleep unfulfilled.

Click here to read the next part - Day 52 - December 25th

Monday, July 30, 2018

Day 50 - December 22nd

        I went straight from Jake's place to Family Christmas at Mum and Dad's. One of the guys must have driven me, or maybe Mum even picked me up from that zoo hahaha... Jesus.
        I'd pretty much been up all night, and was definitely still drunk. Years later my cousin Kate told me that she thought I was a dickhead for ages based on my performance at that family Christmas, but I honestly thought I was killing it. I was high on confidence after my Big Move, I guess everyone else just sat back and let me have my moment.
        After dinner I went out to the bar where Phil was working and from there went back to my good friend Lucy's place – we dated for a while in 2009, I'm not sure if that's important, or adds context? Anyway, we had sex, which was stupid, because I was still technically with Rach, who had returned to Melbourne a few days before I left for Adelaide. Lucy dropped me at Phil's in the morning on her way to work in the city.

Click here to read the next part - Day 51 - Day 23

Day 49 - December 21st

        When I first moved to Melbourne I kept going back – back home to Adelaide – I think I took that nine-hour Greyhound three times each way in the first six months after I left. What it probably was, was that I wanted all my friends to congratulate me on how well I was doing, it's like that kid who keeps coming back to his old primary school in the first few weeks of the new year after they've started high school. Super lame. Just move on, the library still looks the same, stop trying to act like you're nostalgic already.
        I went back for Christmas, as did most of the guys from Melbourne, but my first port of call was Sam and The Lost Boys. Sam and Jake's birthdays both fall in the days around Christmas, so we went to some club night and took a bunch of drugs together to celebrate, just like the old days. Some fuck called Jon Cenzato put gum in my hair while pretending to give me a friendly head massage and I was furious – in my fucking HAIR dude... One of the girls went at it for half an hour trying her best to fix it while I sat there stewing. Eventually she had to cut a chunk of my hair out.
        I made Cenzato buy me a bunch of drinks to make up for it, but I didn't forgive him in my heart, I just took the drinks out of spite. I didn't even know him that well, but most of all I felt like he was doing it as a way to intentionally disrespect me... I mean who knows really. It's a weird thing to think about, dumb power dynamics and whatever.
        The next day we went back to Jake's place to keep partying. That afternoon while Jon Cenzato sat in a deck chair in the sun talking to someone I came up behind him, pulled him down off the chair and laid a couple knees into his ribs, screaming, “THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR PUTTING GUM IN MY FUCKING HAIR!!”.
        It's wild to remember that. I'm laughing because he deserved it, but also because that's such a psycho thing to do – I waited for like twelve hours until he was convinced I'd forgiven him, and then dropped him on the floor out of nowhere. I really wanted to fuck him up. I didn't, because I don't fight and didn't know how, but man. I really wanted to see him cry, to properly hurt him.
        I'm pretty sure everyone laughed at the time, no one really liked him that much.

Click here to read the next part - Day 50 - December 22nd

Day 48 - December 1st

Another one of the nights where I felt like I'd spent a drinking day and had nothing exceptional to show for it. I was saving up a run of days for the trip back to Adelaide over Christmas, and knew that this was the last night I'd be able to drink until then.

Click here to read the next part - Day 49 - December 21st

Day 47 - November 23rd

When I first started working at Yah Yah's I was avoiding drinking at work because it seemed like a waste of a drinking day. I think this falsely endeared me to the management, as if me not drinking was an indication that I was approaching my position as a glassy with the seriousness that the station warranted. Little did they know I would have drank every drop of alcohol in that bar if I could have figured out a way to do so and not lose the dumb bet I'd made with myself almost a year earlier. I hated it by this point, but I was so close, and I couldn't figure out a loophole to escape through.
I don't remember what I did on this night, but it probably involved Pony, which was a club in the city owned by the same people as Yah Yah's that opened until... I want to say 7am? We would finish work at 5am, drink a few free pints there, and then head over to Pony for the last half an hour or so. Whenever one of us got any romantic ('romantic') interest from anyone over the bar during the night, we'd swap numbers with them, and then tell them to head over to Pony to meet us there after we finished. That bar has changed hands now, but it's still called Boney, in what I assume is a nod to the former late-night institution. Boney is a lot nicer, but it took years for the smell of piss to seep away from the rear wall of the dance floor that backs onto the toilet.

Click here to read the next part - Day 48- December 1st