Day 21 - May 18th

Day 21 - May 18th
Battleshots for Phil & Ace's birthday
Chris' gallery opening
$220 fineDefer uni & get a full time job?
Rode in a convertible

        Battleshots was this game I'd seen a picture of online, it's basically battleships (do people know that game? Where you have to guess which square on a grid your opponent has placed their ships on. Do we know that game? I loved war and shit when I was a kid.) but every time you land a hit on one of your opponents ships, you take a drink. I grabbed a couple of old bedsheets and drew grids on them, then saved up a bunch of old milk cartons, cut them in half, length-ways so they could hold cups in them, and spray-painted them a dignified, military grey. We took the setup out to the park near my parents' place in Glandore on the day of Phil and Askham (Ace)'s birthday celebrations, and played a round on the kids' playground. I set up another bed sheet to put in between the two sides of the board so each player couldn't see the other side, and sat back very proud of my creation.
        That night in town I got fined $220 by police for dunk and disorderly behaviour, we'd been sitting at a bar and my friend Will did some dumb shit to annoy me, so I jumped up, grabbed the nearest chair, and chased him down the street brandishing it like a weapon. We ran past the police station, and they popped outside and brought us in.

        In the following weeks I told the story a few times on stage at the Rhino Room, I'd started doing the open mic every Monday I could, and when I told the story on stage I made sure to tell everyone that when I'd chased Will down the street, I'd screamed after him, “I'll kill you, you fucking faggot!”
        The first time I did it it KILLED. The second time it died, and Michael Bowley, the comic who ran the open mic and the first person I ever looked up to in comedy, took me aside after the show and suggested that maybe I don't say the word “faggot” on stage, because it was really bumming people out. I nodded my head while dismissing him internally, shocked that he would ask me to compromise my Artistic Integrity. The next week I did the bit with the word still in there, and I bombed harder than ever. I didn't know what had happened, I'd never experienced it before. My friends tried to console me in the car on the way home, asking if I knew what had happened and why it had gone that way. I had no idea, but I never told the arrest story again.

Click here to read the next part - Day 22 - May 18th