Trouble In A Bubble.

Ariabella and the Newtown Mafia – Going To Meet A Girl And Finding Out That Her Boyfriend Runs The Town

It was midnight on new year’s. I was at some irish pub with my friends. It was adam and eve themed night… so Banto was dressed up as god. Which to him means wearing a white sheet that says “God” on it. Girls were coming up to him all night and saying

“God… what lies in my future?”

“Sex. Lots of good sex.”

“Yay!”

Now somehow I’d met two groups of girls… they turned out to be the same group of girls. The first group I was gaming up this brunette. Let’s call her Marla. I was having a laugh with her and shit. She went to get a drink or something and whispered in my ear “Find me at midnight.”

I said “Okay!”

Then I’m talking this other girl Abby, and her friends. Somehow we end up sitting on a couch soaking up the drinks. We paid $80 to get into this place so we could have as many drinks as we like at this irish pub. However, we have to pay extra for Guinness. Oh the irony. Also the only spirits we could get on the tab was a premixed drink known as Slate Bourbon and Cola. It has about 17 grams of sugar per bottle, probably to hide the cheap and dirty taste of the “Bourbon” which might actually be brewed in New Zealand.

But let’s be honest, cheap drinks are cheap drinks.

Abby is saying this stuff to me like “Oh my God! I’ve never met anyone like you! We have to catch up!” and grabbing my phone, entering her number under “Abby The Tall Intelligent Blonde”. Actually I was pretty impressed with her. She knew a lot about philosophy and shit, and had been reading Eckhart Tolle. I remember I was standing with her upstairs by the pool table. I had my hands on her hips, holding her from behind. Girder’s brother came up and introduced himself. She introduced herself as my fiancée. Girder’s brother is like “oh really? I had no idea”. And we laughed. Pretty sharp girl actually.

The clock is fucking ticking. Abby has disappeared and it’s ten minutes to midnight. I go downstairs, looking for Marla. I’m searching the dance floor and twirl and dance with a smoking latina, then voila. Voila Mademoiselle Marla!

I take her and dance with her for a second. Then I ask “hey, where’s your friend Abby?”

I can’t remember if I was asking out of curiosity, or because I wanted to ring in the new year with Abby. Regardless, Marla said “She’s upstairs, you’d better go find her! GO! FIND HER! NOW!” and I was ushered off. Taken control of.

Abby had her hands all over some chode. I grabbed her and maybe kissed her. I said “Hey, what’s up?” in a casual fashion. She interpreted it as “What the hell are you doing with this guy?”

“Look, I really like you and I want to get to know you better. But right now I want to fuck this guy!”

The guy had choded out and was walking down the stairs.

I laughed “No, you’re coming home with me.” and pulled her in.

Apparently she wasn’t. She ran off down the stairs after Choady McNumbnuts. I hoped she sprains her lips. Not really, I wish her well. We never did go for coffee though.

So somehow at the beginning of that eight minutes, I had two options. Now I had none. Glory is in the game.

So what did I do, you might ask from the peanut gallery? I grabbed the cutest chubby girl I could find and made out with her. She was such a sweety too. Then she said “I’ll be right back.” She wasn’t.  Happy new year.

I was standing by the pool table, chilling with the guys. They’d racked up a plethora of drinks that sat on the barrel, presumably to sneak out when the club closed. This amazing gorgeous blonde chubby girl walked past me and I almost got swept up in her. She was wearing a black and red frilly dress… Wow. Serious wow action. She walked past me in slow motion and went into… the ladies’ bathroom.

I waited there for about 15 minutes… so when she came out I could accost her. She never came out. Or, I never saw her come out.

I thought fuck this, I’m going to find that other chick I saw, with the black dress and the humamamongous bazongas. But when I got to the dancefloor, I saw her, again, in the black and red. Ariabella blonde, on the corner of the dancefloor, laughing with her friends.

I walked right up, kamikazeing, strode up confidently, and started talking… with the most chodest game i’ve ever spat in my life. Well maybe not the chodest, but it wasn’t great. Like “do you like this music” and blah blah blah.

I kept grabbing her to dance with me, and she’s like “uh uh no grinding. No sexy dancing”

I’m like “Ohhh. You’re one of those nice girls huh.” Sure.  She must be.

“Yes. I’m a nice girl.”

I danced with her. Gave her a peck on the lips. Got the digits.

That night I was going all out to get laid. At least I said to myself I was. Back then I didn’t know what “all out” meant. I went to find my friends after I got her number.

New Year’s day is Banto’s birthday. We had a 24 hour party at his place from midnight onwards, with people dropping by all day. I think I got to about 9:30 pm before passing the fuck out.

---

“Double adapters are fucked,” she said.

“Hah oh yeah. You know from experience do you.”

“Well… yes.”

“… Oh.”

“…”

“Kind of don’t know what to say to that. I feel like Holden from ‘Chasing Amy’.”

“But I’m not a lesbian…”

“Yeah but remember that scene where they’re at the hockey and he says ‘so… I ran into Corey the other day’ and she says ‘I sucked him off while Brad fucked me – is that what you wanted to hear??’”

“Oh yeah.”

This was something that shook me. I’d been calling Ariabella every week for a month or so. She lived four hours away by train. So basically… well I probably never would have called her in the first place if I knew she lived in Newtown and not Newcastle. But after calling her a couple of times I started having these fantasies about her being my girlfriend. I imagined telling people the story of how we met, and conveniently leaving out the part about how I went off looking for the girl with the big tits in the black dress.

How embarrassing.

She told me she had sex in the cooter and the clacker at the same time. It kind of tarnished that image.

Actually, I learnt some important lessons that day. Like the end of a Brady Bunch episode or something.

“So Billy… what did you learn today?”

“Well Dad, I learnt not to assume that just because a girl seems nice, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like to get her fuck on.”

Also I learnt that you shouldn’t judge a girl on her sexual history. However, if I had, it probably would have saved a lot of time… but also this story wouldn’t be as interesting.

Here I am trying to fit these two conflicting pictures into my head: one of me giving Ariabella a sweet boyfriendly kiss. And at the same time, her getting hammered from behind by two guys. Silly me. Tsk tsk tsk.

Somehow I managed to resolve this in my mind, and I still liked her. She was unemployed then. She told me about some guy she was seeing, a bouncer, who paid her rent and bought her groceries. Still, somehow she was living off vegemite sandwiches and cheap wine. She said the guy thought he was her boyfriend.

What a chode, I thought. It is normal for an attractive girl to have guys chasing her and buying her things. Lou always had that guy who would drive her places… That sort of thing. I busted her chops and called her Holly Golightly. She said she preferred to think of herself as Marilyn Monroe.

Finally I said to myself “fuck it. I like this girl and i’m going down to Sydney to see her, I don’t care if it is 4 hours away.”

Called her up on Monday. She was asleep, and probably hungover. Actually, she was always hungover or drinking when I called her. They say love is blind, but I guess it’s also stupid.

Every time:

“You’re asleep, maybe I should leave you to it.”

“No no, I’m awake now. How are you?” with a smile in her voice.

I shot the shit with her. Told her I was coming down on the weekend. I said I was going to stay with my friend August, who lived on the other side of Newtown… but I hadn’t called him. I figured I’d just sleep in Aria’s bed.

I called her again on Friday.

“Urghh hi. Aria here.”

“Ciao bella. It’s Kurt”

“Oh! Hi!” The sound of her sitting up in her bed “How are you?”

Blah blah blah. I told her the trains weren’t running this weekend, and I’d have to take the bus.

“Huh?”

“The trains aren’t running to Sydney this weekend. I’ll catch the bus and get in about 12:30.”

“Oh… really? You’re seriously coming? I thought you were kidding.”

“Well… I wasn’t.”

---

It’s 11:30 and the bus hasn’t reached Hornsby. I’m talking to myself, learning Brazilian Portuguese from some MP3s on my phone. I get a message.

“Hey you were kidding about coming down today right?”

What the fuck dude.

“No. I don’t see what’s funny about it. I’m on the bus now. Should be in Newtown in an hour.” I send the text, then get second thoughts thinking it sounds too harsh.

“Oh ok. Tell me when you get on the train from Central.”

I get into Newtown and walk out of the station. After about ten minutes I see a gorgeous chubby girl with blonde curly hair walking towards me. I give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Then she’s like “Come on, we have to get out of here.”

I’m like “Cool, let’s go for a walk.”

She starts walking and she’s really putting the hoof on. I’m like “Hey, what’s the big rush?”

I duck into one of the cool little stores they have in Newtown and she’s like “No seriously we have to go! We have to get away from the Town Hall Hotel!”

“Okay…” and I start walking with her “…why?”

“Because… someone could be watching.”

“I didn’t realise the Newtown FBI had you on their watchlist Ariabella.”

“Seriously we’ve got to go.”

We got way down King Street and stopped in a café.

“Okay Aria, so are you going to tell me why we had to run all the way down here?”

“Well… there’s this guy. He probably has someone watching us.”

“Oh. You have a stalker.”

“No, he’s not a stalker. He’s just, I don’t know.”

“What kind of stalker can be watching you all the way along king street?”

“It’s not him that would see us, it’s all his friends. I went out with him and he thinks he’s my boyfriend.”

“What a psycho… why would he think that?”

“Well… because he kinda… is.”

I’m like oh. The waitress came over to our table. I ordered pancakes, and Aria ordered some coffee.

“So who is this guy?”

“His name’s Dan. He’s a bouncer at the Town Hall Hotel.”

“Right. So he’s got the Newtown Mafia watching us. Am I likely to get beaten up on my way home?”

“No, it’ll be okay… I’ll just tell him you’re gay. That’s what I did last time.”

“Last time?”

“Yeah… except last time it was ammdg fmgdma sdmfm…” and trailed off, then changed the subject.

A dark haired Mediterranean waiter came over and was tapping the ashtrays of the tables surrounding ours, or something. He asked if he could get us anything. Ariabella said “Sure, get me a hangover cure.”

He laughed and said “There’s only one hangover cure, which is to drink a litre of water before you go to bed.”

“Well, I find black coffee and cigarettes works pretty well.”

I laughed “Sure, that’s like a bandaid over an axewound.”

Waiter said “Yeah, or like a bandaid over an amputated leg.” He wiped off the tables next to us, then walked off.

I thought, that waiter is really friendly. I might have to tip him.

A lady walked past and asked us for a light. I saw Aria shine a little at that moment. She didn’t hold any of her personality back when talking to this lady, it was like she was talking to a friend. I was impressed.

Waiter came back and made some more conversation with us, wiped off the tables, again. Tapped the ashtrays, again… They didn’t have anything in them.

I thought, gee, the service is really good here.

The pancakes weren’t really pancakes. There was a selection of fruit on my plate and a stack of four wholemeal buckwheat pancake quarters in the corner of it. I prefer to eat a stack of five whole pancakes with ice cream and maple syrup. It was pretty good though.

As we talked, I felt the burning stare of someone staring at the back of my head. The waiter was standing at the door with a tea towel in hand, trying to look casual. Curiouser and curiouser.

After we left, Ariabella realised that the waiter was a friend of her boyfriend’s. So it was true, there was a Newtown Mafia, bouncers in every pub… waiters in every café. About that time I was wondering if I would escape Newtown with my face intact.

I did. We all lived happily ever after.

I kept calling Ariabella every few weeks after that. Every time I would ask her for her news… Either she’d broken up with Dan, or she’d gotten back together with him. Eventually, she would say to me that she’s had enough. She’s breaking up with him for good this time, and she would shut him out completely so he couldn’t weasel his way back in.

Believed that, the first time. The next two times I was a bit skeptical.

Called her the other day, after not talking to her for a few months. She said she was back with Dan. I wasn’t in a particularly good mood when I rang her… stretch my apathy to the limit.

“Oh, I thought you were breaking up with him for good.”

“Yes… I did. But then I realised we’re meant to be together. It’s fate, or written in the stars.”

“Mmmmhmm.”

“What?”

“Mmm…”

“You have to say something or I’ll hang up on you.”

“I wouldn’t really mind.”

“If I hang up?”

“Yeh.”

“Oh. Well anyway I do have a few things to do. I really have to go.”

“So, you’re hanging up on me.”

“…Pretty much. It was lovely to hear from you though. I’ll give you a call sometime soon.”

“Sure.”

“Goodbye.”

“Bye.”

I guess it scared me a little. I got a vision of a woman having to perform the same actions over and over again, each time thinking it would be different this time. Trapped in a continuous cycle of idiocy, like Sisyphus, except stupider. I didn’t call her after that.

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