It’s 2003. I’m standing at a party in East Maitland. I’m giving out mixtapes to anyone who will accept them. I’m talking about music with this fellow. He doesn’t listen to hip-hop, but he is a musician… sorta.

“So all three of us bought guitars… Felonius took it up right away. Now he’s a wizard. The guy can just play. For me and Jeremy though, it didn’t work out so well. We tried, but we can’t really play that well… So we figured what we’ll do is find some heroin, push off, and write a shitload of songs. Like Cobain did.”

“I don’t think Cobain was-”

“He was a great songwriter – you can’t deny that.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think it comes from -”

“He wrote a lot of great songs while he was on the horse.. So that’s what me and Jeremy are going to do.”

“You can’t just take heroin and -”

“It’s okay, we won’t share needles or anything. I’ve got a guy who knows a guy in Kings Cross, good shit, we won’t get burned. Then we’ll write the songs and it’ll be great.”

“Right… Of course.”

“Anyway I’m gonna go find Jeremy. Catch you later bro.”

“From now on, I’m telling you all, I won’t be able to adjust your schedules for toilet breaks.”

Everyone was silent. Wait, what? “What are we, in prison?” I said. Welcome to Shawshank.

“I’m serious. It’s not so much the toilet that gets me, it’s going to the kitchen, hanging out and chatting, getting water… It takes too much time out of your schedule. There is no allowance in your schedule for toilet breaks.”

“Panini… Straight up. If I need to take a shit, I’ll take a shit.” I saw from the look on Panini’s face that he instantly recognised my logic was irrefutable. “So how does that apply to me?” I said.

Bright said “Do you have to say ‘shit’? How would you guys like it if I started talking about that time of the month?”

“To be honest, I don’t care. I’ve had girlfriends; I know the score.”

“Bright, please. I’m sure you’ve all heard it before. We can be mature about this. Now, as I’ve said, there is no allowance for toilet breaks in your schedule. Inbound consultants require many skills, and, unfortunately, bladder control is one of them. If you don’t find that suitable, perhaps you would prefer moving to an outbound role where it is an allowance.”

“But sometimes I get really intense diarrhoea…” started Al. “What am I supposed to do then?”

“If you’re sick, let me know, and we can deal with it on a case-by-case basis. As a general rule though, no toilet breaks.”

I’m not sure what Panini said after that, but somehow he managed to explain it in a way that made it seem perfectly rational, and I didn’t bring up my shit argument again.

After the meeting, Al turned to me and said “Remember in training when we were told we would be allowed toilet breaks, and that SalesWorld is a reasonable employer when it comes to that?”

“Yeah… In fact I remember Laphroaig’s exact words. He said that if you’ve had a dodgy vindaloo the night before, that’s fine, you’ll be able to use the toilet if you need it. Quite a turn-around.”

I told a couple of my friends outside of work on Panini’s Shawshank policy. They said the same thing, that he was obviously an inexperienced manager, and that how allowing your staff to have toilet “privileges” was really a basic tenet of management. I wondered how such a manager who was normally so rational would institute a rule that was obviously so irrational, and even impractical. Even if it was as Panini said, that there were people who were abusing going to the bathroom, then those individuals should be dealt with personally. A blanket rule is very inappropriate, and impractical.

During our entire team meeting, it was obvious that Panini had had his superiors come down on him… making demands from their ivory towers. So he had come down on us.

A couple of weeks later, I finished my shift at 5:30. I went to the toilet to lay down the brown, unwavering log of the law. Both of the stalls were full.

I waited there for about twelve minutes. Then Panini came out of the first stall.

“You could have gone upstairs you know,” he said.

“I would, I didn’t realise you were building the Taj Mahal in there.”

“Mate… It’s the only place I can get a break.”

I laughed for a second… Then I stopped laughing.

Trying to apply for a proof of age card the other day. The form said I need to get someone such as a Justice of the Peace, a policeman, a school principal etc. who had known me for more than twelve months to sign the form. I don’t know anyone in Melbourne like that. It’s kind of funny, because I didn’t have to get a JP to sign to get my passport, an internationally recognised document. But for this piece of plastic, it is so.

“If you don’t know one of these people, call this number 1300 xxx xxx to make alternative arrangements.”

Okay, cool. Turns out the alternative arrangements were more or less the lady saying “Are you sure you don’t know one of those people?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Hm…”

Then she said “…Twelve months is only a guideline.” She’s saying that a registered nurse fits in these categories. I said “How so? It’s not listed.”

“Look at item Y.”

Item Y says something like “A person who is employed by the nature of the classification under the Act Of Demographic Apologism 1983 or by which wherefore the classification could be classified accordingly heretofore that person notwithstanding.”

“Yeah, that means a public servant.”

“Why doesn’t it say that?”

“It’s an old… document.”

As it stands, I still haven’t found someone to sign it who fits under item Y.

The other night I went out with Age to help him pick up girls. I said to my housemates we went out and had great success! My housemate said “So he picked up then?” I said “Not exactly.”

There’s a philosophy from Kyodu, zen archery. In western archery, success is measured quantitatively. Either you hit the target, or you don’t. In Kyodu, it’s measured qualitatively. The success is measured by the flight of the arrow, and the stroke you make to get the arrow into the air. You can never control the arrow once it leaves your hands, however, it’s always within your control to take the right action while it is within them.

“Let’s go up Swanston Street and say hi to some girls before we go into the club… It helps me get warmed up and unstifled.”

“Okay,” I said.

Walking up the street, there was a hippie holding a sign, and there were a bunch of people hanging around. At first I thought it was another Socialist rallly. Then I noticed the sign said “If you walk into this area you may be filmed.” They were filming a commercial, trying to give cops a good image.

Standing in the middle of the footpath were three police, with heir backs to the camera.

“Welcome to Hollywood,” I said.

We kept walking. Standing on the other side of Flinders Lane were three attractive glam girls, apparently waiting to cross the road. “Talk to these girls,” I said. We walked across the alley and they were still waiting to cross.

Age is half-Chinese, but always lived in Australia. He said in his best racist stereotype Chinese accent: “Excusa me. You very beautiful woman. In my country China, you very beaut-ee-full. Please will you make the babies witha me.”

The girls cracked up. “No thank you hee hee hee.”

“You very beaut-ee-full woman. You make little Age very happy.”

They kept laughing. “Thank you, but I’m kinda busy right now. We’re filming a commercial.”

Then some stage manager or whatever you call it came over and said “Hey, you guys, get out of here!” He didn’t find it very funny. I did. They should have put up a sign saying “please don’t touch the animals” or something, like at the zoo. Come on, you put three gorgeous girls on the street and expect us not to talk to them? Heh heh heh.

I high-fived Age. “Man, that was awesome.” Age set his goal to talk to four women that night. He exceeded his goal – the most girls he’d cold-approached in 6 months or so. Great success!

Saturday night. I’m up $140 on $0.50/$1 so I decide to take a shot on $2/$3.

I made a kissy sound at the supe – it’s a signal that all the staff do at Crown to get attention. “Hey, my friends are sitting down here at table 23 and there are open seats -”

“Jump right in.”

“Thanks.”

“Well well Mr. Devilfish,” said Vasily. “It seems you’ve finally graduated from computer games to real poker with real cards and real chips.”

I played tight for a while. I’m looking down at ace jack offsuit, first to act. I make it $15, which is a small raise on $2/$3. Weezer in the glasses next to me makes it $60. Gwen folds. Shaolin in the corner makes it $150 to go. Gwen folds, Vasily folds… fold around to me. I look down at my cards and look at Vasily. He shakes his head. No good. I muck. Weezer calls and turns over AK. Shaolin turns over aces.

“It’s just like the movie,” says Vasily. “One big hand an hour.”

I picked up ace queen suited in early position… I made it five big blinds. Vasily shoved all in from the big blind. I thought about it. Vasily had just given me the read on Shaolin when I looked over at him. Surely he wouldn’t do the same for me to get a read on him though. I look down at my cards again.

“Fuck you, I call.”

“Damnit, why did you call? I tried to tell you how strong I was!” He turned over AKs and stacked me.

“I thought you were just being a bastard.”

“Are you buying back in?”

“I can’t – I’m just playing with my profit.”

“I didn’t picture you going out like this Mr. Brixton. I thought you would go out all guns blazing, firing on all cylinders, shooting for the moon.”

“Not tonight Vasily. Good game.”

“GG.”

I ended up $5 down for the night.

I went upstairs to the food court and ran into some of the other guys from Inselligence. Ended up at the Carlton Club. On the way there, they handed me a bottle of vegan wine. I drank half of it. It was smooth, but tasted weak. I wonder if “Organic natural” was some sort of euphemism for “non-alcoholic”.

I’m drinking Corona with lime and turning to people as if I’m in an ad “¡La cerveza mas fina!” and they say “…What?”

Manolo is telling me how his company is hauling half a million in its first year or something ridiculous.

“It’s great – now all the major companies have laid off a lot of their staff, they need work done, and I pick up the contracts! I wake up at 7 and think, nah fuck it. I jack off, go back to sleep, wake up and then maybe I’ll do some work. Working for yourself is the best thing ever.”

“Sounds awesome. But there is one question I must ask you, and one question alone.”

“What’s that?”

“Where the ladies at?”

“Good question.”

I grabbed a tall Jewish-looking girl with a tight body and started dribbling shit. She bobbed around as I talked to her.

“You’re very variable in your altitude.”

“Such words!” she laughed.

“I apologise… My verbosity increases in directly proportion to my inebriation.”

While we were standing there, and she was listening to me talk about how great Dr. Seuss is: “Yeah, I’d probably say that Oh! The Places You’ll Go is the greatest book of all time. It’s a guide for everything that’s going to happen in your life.”

Talk talk, get the digits. As I’m talking to her, I grab her by the waist a couple of times and kiss her on her cheek.

The third time, I grab her and go to kiss her on the lips.

“Wait. I have a boyfriend.”

I stare at her in disbelief.

“What. Why is that so bad?”

I laughed. “Do I really have to explain?”

She’s been standing here letting me touch her for about fifteen minutes, involved in a sexual, physical interaction with me. Now when I go to kiss her, she’s playing make-believe that I haven’t been wearing my cock on my sleeve all along. As soon as the implicit meaning becomes explicit, she can’t quite pretend any more. Or can she?

“What? Why can’t a guy and a girl just talk and be friends in a nightclub?”

“Fuck that shit,” I laughed. “I want to fuuuck!”

She laughed. “Why can’t we just have fun talking together?”

“We can, but it’s a natural progression. We have fun talking together, then we have sex.”

“You’re getting weird about this. You’re so cut up.”

I wasn’t angry or disturbed, just shocked – but I adjust, and return to my regularly scheduled nimbus.

“Nah, I’m cool with it.”

“It bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“Not really. I don’t give a shit. Anyway, probably my most favouritest book of all time is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. It’s all about doing things for the right reasons, and how do you measure a man.”

I paused.

“…What, you’re asking me?”

“Yeah, because if you do it by inches, I got to tell you, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. No wait – I just mean you’ll be sore, not disappointed.”

I talked a little longer about Rand, and then she said she’d better get back to her friends. She leant in to kiss me on the lips.

“Whoa,” I said, and grabbed her by the shoulders to stop her.

She kisses me on the cheek instead. “You read too much into things,” she says, as if she intended to kiss me on the cheek all along. I don’t like playing make-believe.

I must be starting to get over my anger issues. If this were three, four months ago I probably would have told her off for being so stupid and leading me on – making it out as if I’d misunderstood the situation from the beginning. I’d really break it down for her so she understood my exact grievance with her behaviour – saying something poetic in its simplicity, for example: “Bitch??? Are you retarded???”

Then I’d let it ruin my whole night. Instead I just forgave her. After all, why should I be mad. She thought if she mentioned her boyfriend immediately I would probably wish her farewell, so she disguised the fact for fifteen minutes just so she could hang out with my cool ass.

I had a few more drinks and went home.

I met Jaide in a chatroom in 2002. At that time, my human contact was minimal. Most of my days were spent sleeping, and my nights I spent making music. Confined in a dark room for ten or so hours, recording amateur raps with amateur production, mooching off my parents, and healing my soul and my brain from the unusual events of the previous year. It was an odd time in my life.

Jaide was an insomniac when I first met her. She spent her days going to uni, and her nights trying to stay awake. She told me she had a recurring dream. She would be lying on the beach, and somehow she’d go out to swim and end up drowning. She was lying there in shallow water, and a lifeguard came to save her.

“Is this her?” he would say. Her father and her siblings were standing around her in the water. She lay there floating just under the surface, unable to speak or move.

“No, that’s not her,” said her father.

Her lifeless body drifted out to the ocean, and deep under the water. Her body would reach a place where the water was hot, almost boiling. There was a volcano, and written on one of the smoldering rocks were the numbers “79-3″. A man with slick black hair in a tuxedo would greet her. “Hello,” he said.

She would awake, sweating heavily, with her heart full of terror.

When I first chatted with her, every ten minutes she would type “brb, going to do a handstand.” How frustrating when you’re trying to flirt with a girl and she keeps walking away to do handstands. And how intriguing.

A couple of weeks later, she gave me her phone number. Two weeks after that, I worked up the nerve to call her. I was so nervous and had no idea what to say. She talked a lot, in a North American accent. She lived in Melbourne, but she was born in Nova Scotia.

“It was so disgusting… You know that doctor guy I told you about. He asked me and Marco the other day what we thought of child pornography. I said it’s disgusting, it’s terrible and it’s exploitative, and anybody who does that sort of thing should be locked up. He paused for about ten seconds and then he said ‘Oh. But thirteen years old – that’s not really a child, right?’”

“What the fuck?” I laughed.

A week later I called her again.

“Hey.”

“Hey. Who’s this?”

“It’s Jones.”

“Oh. Hi.”

“What are you up to?”

“I’m just outside of a cafe with my friend.”

“What happened to your voice?”

“What do you mean?” She said in a regular Australian accent.

“You sound different.”

“It’s because I’m on my mobile!”

“Ah… okay.”

“Anyway I can’t talk long – can’t be rude! I’d better go. Talk to you later!”

“Okay… bye.”

She told me she lived with her father, a successful businessman, her stepmother, who was a nervous wreck, and her step-brother, who was intellectually and physically half-ape.

“Hey Jaide.”

There was a moment’s delay. Then a typed reply. “Hey bro. It’s not Jaide. It’s Alex.”

“Jaide’s stepbrother?”

“Yeh.”

“Okay. What’s up?”

“Found Jaide’s diary and reading it.”

“Okay. You probably shouldn’t be doing that.”

“Why not, it’s a free country.”

“It’s private.”

“So is my dick. Except when it’s not. Hahahahahah.”

“Right.”

“I’m in love with her.”

“That’s kind of weird.”

“Man, can you tell me anything that would help me have sex with her?”

“Uh… I don’t think so.”

“Come on, help a brother get laid. What is the deal with that Marco guy anyway? Are they fucking?”

“I doubt it…”

“You gotta help me out here. What can I do to get inside her head? You must know what she likes.”

“I can’t think of anything. Even if I could, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Don’t be a dick. Man, you’re pretty protective of her considering what it says about you in her diary.”

“I don’t care what it says.”

“Just sayin’… It’s not good. Anyway gotta go rub one out. See ya scro.”

“Later.”

Later that day, Jaide signed into MSN, and said Alex had been telling her that I’d been asking him to read her diary. I said “That’s not exactly accurate.” She believed my side of the story, and I was pleased that she trusted me, even over her step-brother whom she detested. At the time I was lonely and starved for affection, hooked desperately on what some girl on the Internet thought of me. Nowadays, I hardly even give a shit what I think of me.

A few weeks later she logged in and messaged me.

“Jesus Christ. One of them left a steamer in my bathroom.”

“A what? Who?”

“A big, nasty, smelly turd in my toilet. Of all the things… if you’re going to invade someone’s house like that, you could at least flush. It’s ridiculous.”

“Who?”

“The police. They raided my home.”

“What? Why?”

“Did I ever tell you about my father?”

“You told me he was a businessman. Corporate executive or something.”

“Right, a businessman. My father operates in pharmaceuticals.”

“I see…”

“My father is a drug lord. They came to collect evidence. Of course they didn’t find anything. There’s nothing here that they could use to convict him. That didn’t stop them hanging around for a day, going through all my things, and leaving a big, fat, sloppy abomination in my en suite.”

“Don’t they need a warrant or something?”

“I don’t know if they need a warrant, but I do know that I need an exorcist for that bathroom. Anyway, I bought this record today. It’s Skip Williams. Found it in a little second-hand record store on Little Collins. Funny thing is, the clerk probably had no idea that this record is worth about $500. I picked it up for $3.50.”

She never mentioned that incident again.

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Nothing. Updating my resume. You know, I made a stupid mistake the other day.”

“How’s that?”

“I had a job interview the other day and I e-mailed them the wrong resumé. I e-mailed them a resumé that I made up for creative writing purposes.”

I laughed.

“They were all gathered around the table, saying stuff like:

“‘So. Jaide… it says here you speak four languages, including Cantonese, Japanese, and Algerian?’

“‘Uh… yeah. No, that’s not quite accurate. I must have given you the wrong resumé. I wrote that one as a work of fiction.’

“They sat there somberly nodding their heads, smiling politely. They were a bunch of Seinfeld types.”

“So, completely humourless then?”

“I’m afraid so.”

A few weeks or months later, she typed to me “I can’t stand living here any longer with that woman and it.”

“Who?”

“Alex and his mother.”

“Heh oh yeah. That pervert.”

“Pervert? Well not really. It’s not like we’re related by blood… Though you’re right, he is a pervert. He once put down a hundred dollar note on the breakfast table and said it was mine if he could suck my left nipple for one minute. His mother was washing the dishes at the time.”

“What did his mother say?”

“Nothing. Just pretended not to hear it. Anyway I’m moving out next week. Probably won’t have Internet for a while so I probably won’t talk to you for a few months.”

“Call me.”

“Sure.” She never called me.

Two months later, she signed in. I did a chode-jump to my computer and typed carefully: “Hey.”

“Hey. Listen can you do me a favour. Call my dad’s house and ask for me. I’ll explain later.”

“…Okay.”

I looked up her number, picked up the phone and dialed.

“Hello?”

“Hey. Is Jaide there?”

“Jaide? I’m afraid there’s no-one here by that name.”

“Oh… uhh… okay.”

I turned back to the computer. “They said you don’t live there.”

“What? What did you say to them?”

“I just said ‘is Jaide there?’ and they said you don’t live there.”

“Jaide? No, they don’t know me by that name. You have to ask for Cristina.”

“Huh?”

“Sorry, I’ve just had a memory lapse – how do I know you again? From uni?”

“What the fuck is going on here? Who is this?”

“Okay, okay. This is Scott, Cristina’s boyfriend. I need to know where Cristina is.”

“Cristina?”

“Yes, Cristina.”

“Well, why don’t you call and ask for her?”

He went offline.

The next time she came online, I asked her why this guy thought her name was Cristina.

“When I was very young, we were leaving Romania. My father had a lot of enemies, and so they wouldn’t find us, he swapped our first and middle names.”

“So your first name is really Cristina?”

“No, my first name is really Jaide, but on my passport it says Cristina.”

“Right… I thought you said you were born in Canada.”

“What? Who told you that?”

“Who do you think?”

“I don’t see why I would have told you that. I was never born in Canada. I did live in Nova Scotia for five years when I was very young.”

A few months later, she changed her name by deed poll, from Williemsen to Regep. Regep was her father’s surname.

“You know, if you wanted to change your identity, you probably shouldn’t have changed your last name to that of a known criminal figure.”

“Oh… yeah.”

Sometimes she was compassionate and tender. Other times she was full of venom, just spitting distilled oil of vitriol, or even casually telling me that I would die alone and unloved, in a friendly, relaxed tone.

“Why do you have to make your music so… shithouse?”

“Have you ever heard of constructive criticism?”

“Sure. Yes I have. And here it is: You must be a delusional, straight-up psychotic, schizophrenic freak, if you think that anybody is going to listen to that trash you call music. You really ought to see a psychiatrist. Is that constructive enough for you?”

“Right.”

I never met her in person. I don’t talk to her any more. When I think of her, what I’m reminded of most is my own naïveté. For many many months I was fascinated with her. But now I realise, if I were to believe everything she told me, I’d have to believe that she had at least four marriage proposals in the couple of years that I knew her, that she’d been abducted and kept in a basement, that she’d been sexually abused by her uncle at a young age, that her ex-boyfriend (and then later, boyfriend again) had tried to kill her – among other various claims, contradictions and exaggerations. She was probably the most mysterious person I’d ever met. Some mysteries are not worth solving.

“Okay. The reason I’ve brought you guys in here today is because there’s been a few complaints about the pay,” said Hallsy. “I know a few of you are worried that you’re not being paid correctly. Consider this: our parent company TalkLink is a publicly listed company. If anyone complains to Ernst & Young that they’re not being paid correctly, then we’ll be audited and probably get into a whole heap of trouble. It’s in our interests to pay you as much money as we can, to keep you guys happy and to keep the company profitable. If we don’t, it’s just going to result in a high turnover and we’ll have to spend thousands of dollars on training new staff.”

We were all sitting around Hallsy like schoolkids, some on the floor, some on the chairs up the back. He stood in front of us in a charcoal suit, extremely animated. He hardly stopped to take a breath.

“The thing is, we can have a workplace where you dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s, and everybody is really bored because of these procedures and bullshit that you have to go through just to pick your nose. What I really want, and what I think you guys want, is to have a fun work environment where we don’t worry too much about that stuff.

“Now, as for the sales process. There’s a lot of back-end stuff that you guys don’t really think about when you’re on the phones, so I’m going to explain a few things to you. When you do a sale, and do the verbal recording, it goes through a few stages before it’s cleared and you will get paid for that sale. Firstly, we send it upstairs to compliance. Those guys go over the recording with a fine-tooth comb to make sure it’s all ridgy-didge. If it’s not – if you’ve told the customer a lie on the recording, or you’ve not answered their questions correctly, then we can’t submit it to the client. Simple as that. We can’t send them a verbal contract where you’ve made up some new terms for the customer. That’s why we have compliance.

“The guys up in compliance are basically all sales rejects who can’t do a real job, so they’re all bitter and twisted and they’re going to be really harsh on your recordings. So that’s my first point. Keep the recording clean. I don’t care if you have to dodgy it up to get the customer into the recording – just as long as the recording itself is clean, and make sure you do a thorough rehash so at least by the end of the call, the customer understands what’s going on.

“After compliance, the record gets submitted to the client, and they send out a welcome pack to the customer. Who here has got a welcome pack in the mail?”

Ten people put up their hands.

“Fantastic – there you go. Now those of you that are with us for your electricity at home will know that it doesn’t actually have any sales material in it. It doesn’t sell the customer at all. It just has some information about GreenPower and lists of rates, that sort of crap. That’s why soft-selling is such a bad idea. I know a lot of you might say stuff to the customer trying to just hustle a sale through, saying ‘We’ll just send you out the information so you can have a look through it.’ No. No. That’s never going to work. Of course they’ll get the information in the mail and say ‘What the hell is this?’ Thinking they only agreed to get information, and there in black and white it’s saying that they’ve signed up for the service. What do you think they’ll do next? Of course they’ll ring inbound with an abusive call telling them to cancel the sale.

“The thing is, I know what goes on. You guys get your pay, see that you haven’t been paid for all your sales, and you turn to the next guy in your pod and start complaining about it and negging out everybody around you. Isn’t that so Bernie?”

“Not really, I haven’t been complai-”

“No, I know how it is and I know how it goes. You’ll start whinging about it to everybody, blaming the company, when really the reason is that you haven’t done your job properly. You haven’t read the recording script correctly, and you’ve put through dodgy sales.”

I was sitting near the back of the room, with a look of emotionless consideration on my face. Hallsy was up there talking so fast, and I was listening carefully to every word, trying to decipher what he was trying to make us believe, and what the real message was.

“Can’t we get a report where we can see which sales were cancelled and the reason why?” said the Geordie.

“That’s a good idea, and I’ve looked at it, but with the current systems in place it would be too expensive to implement.

“Anyway, as I said, we can have a workplace that’s focused on getting everything correct and precise, and have a gazillion procedures to follow, and everyone has to sign in and sign out, and get all the KPIs that measure how long you took a toilet break for –”

I caught Hallsy’s eye for an instant, and I could see him flinch. Something beneath the surface came through for a second, and I didn’t like it.

“- or… we can have a fun workplace that’s focused on building culture and having a good time.”

Hallsy sent us out of the meeting room and we went to get on the phones.

“That was a motivational meeting,” said Abbott. “Want to know why you’re underpaid? Because you’re shit.”

Six months later I found out that our admin Tiffany had been fired for making consistent errors in the pay. One week she neglected to pay someone entirely, and tried to give him money to stop him from telling the managers.

“Please don’t tell Keats,” she said. “Here, I’ll give you $200.”

“Uh… but I was supposed to be paid $450 this week.” Fail.

At my new workplace, one of the first things we did in training was a module about sexual harassment, OH&S, and drugs in the workplace. At Inselligence, Ranga would come out during game time and ask if anyone had a $5 bill.

“Sure I’ve got one,” I said, guessing that he had two $2 coins and a $1 that he wanted to change up.

“Cool – don’t worry, I’ll bring it right back.” He took it, started rolling it up, went to the bathroom for five minutes, came back and handed it to me.

“Getting a little motivation there?” I inquired.

“That’s right – time to sell the shit out of some customers!”

I didn’t realise it when I started at Inselligence in Melbourne, but I’d actually worked for the same company when I was living in Newcastle, doing door-to-door. We were representing a government-owned company, so everyone had to sign a declaration saying they’d never been convicted, blah blah. Somehow, I was the only member of my team who hadn’t served hard time.

I turned around when we were driving out to turf in the van. Derrick was applying make-up to his face.

“What… what the fuck are you doing?!”

“Putting foundation on to hide my tattoos.”

“Oh. Right. Of course.”

“Hello. Is this Jones?” said a London accent down the phone.

“Yes, it is.”

“Jones, this is Alec Pendleton from Fremantle Media. How are you?”

“I’m well. What’s crackin’?”

“I got your information from your Australian Idol audition. I saw the footage of you and thought you might be interested in a role we have for a pilot.”

“Really? What’s the role?”

“It’s a pilot for a dating show. Don’t worry though, we’re not going to be setting you up with anyone. Would you be interested?”

“Sure, sounds fun.”

“Excellent. Now the role is for the pilot, and if you’re selected for the pilot, and the show ends up being produced, that means you’ll have precedence to appear on the show. The audition is on x date at 8 pm in Crows Nest. Okay?”

“Not a problem.”

“I’ll email you the details and a form to fill out.”

I went back inside the call centre, got a drink of water, and went back to the phones to sell some insurance.

The next week, I got off at Crows Nest station after a three hour train trip. I didn’t really know where I was. I found the address, off the main road in a narrow street. Sitting on the steps were four 15 year old boys.

“Heyyy. G-String man!” I said.

“Hey, someone recognises me!” said the boy. G-string man was famous for performing at Australian Idol auditions, and, while still singing, stripping down to nothing but a leopard print G-string.

Inside, I took a seat and filled in one of those silly questionaires. What are you like as a person. What are your three greatest attributes. Name two people who would go on camera to talk about you.

I started making conversation with the other auditioners.

“So what’s the deal? They’re going to put us in a room and a panel of girls grills a guy?”

“I hope it’s not the other way around,” said a gorgeous brunette.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not even sure what I’m doing here. I came on Idol dressed in a skin-tight frog suit as a joke. Now they’re saying they want me to audition for this? I hope they don’t actually put me on a date with a girl… That would really piss off my girlfriend.”

I felt pretty good and in a social mood by the time they asked “Okay – who wants to go first?” I jumped out of my seat.

I shook hands with Alec and the other producer. They lead me down the hall and set up a camera on my face, with a bright light pointed directly into my eyes. Sitting on the panel were four beautiful girls. An alternative type with black and fuchsia dreadlocks. A button-down shorty who could be a receptionist. A snappy black girl with huge curls. And a redhead wearing pastels.

“Alright and we’re rolling. So Jones, what do you do?” Boring interview timez. That’s okay though. I’m about to go Brando on this. They won’t know what hit them.

“I’m a gangster.” I’m in the best state I’ve ever been in. Beams of light are shooting out of my mouth. The power of nimbus. The girls crack up. The guys look extremely puzzled.

“Okay, okay. But what do you really do?” said Alec.

“I’m an insurance salesman,” I say with a grin.

“Yes, okay. But what do you really do?” he asks, slightly frustrated.

I chuckle. “I really sell insurance.”

“You seem to have quite a sense of humour Jones, is that right?”

I smile. “Yes.” The girls burst into a fit of laughter again. I say to Alec as an aside: “They sure seem to think so.” The producers are currently having their minds blown. Guys don’t know what to do with chick crack. I don’t think they planned for this in their pre-production meeting.

“So Jones, what’s the least desirable quality for you in a woman?”

“Cowardice.” Silence.

“Can you explain that a bit further?”

“Sure. Once I had a girl who wouldn’t commit to me, because she was afraid of falling in love with me, of losing control. I can’t stand for that.”

After each question, they’d get the girls to put up their pieces of paper if they liked me, and put them down if they didn’t like me. They’re intending to narrow down the girls that like me. Thing is, question after question, the girls keep putting their signs up. Except for the last question, when the black girl put her sign down.

“Alright, it’s time to change things up a bit. Jones, now you can ask the girls some questions and choose which one you like.”

I asked them questions like “If you were, a colour, which colour would you be?” and “What character from Sex and the City are you most like?” The button down shorty sold herself to me for five minutes about why she would be Carrie. I chose her, picked her up from the seat and spun her around on camera.

Really though, I preferred the alternative girl. I think her name was Abby. She had a Polish last name.

The other producer said “Okay Jones, we’re done. So you’re free for the recording date, right?”

“Yep.”

“Brilliant. Okay, thanks for your time.” I went home.

They never called me back.

About a year later, a dating show produced by Fremantle came on the air. You might have seen it. It’s called Taken Out. I’ve never watched the show, but I’ve been told the premise is that they get some dateless wonder to appear before a panel of 30 women. one by one, they reject the guy, until finally one lucky lady is left with the douchebag whom no other woman could bring herself to love.

Obviously (to me at least) the show was doomed to be a failure. If a guy is attractive to a woman, he’s going to be attractive to all women, or at least most women. Instead they’ve got a show about boring loser rejects.

Also, what became apparent was how inappropriate my strategy was in coming into the audition. I thought I was supposed to be charming and fascinating. Instead I should have been just pathetic and cute enough that one woman would take pity on me. Then when I got onto the real show – BAM! Hit ‘em with the fireworks.

Anyway, the show was cancelled before the first season finished. Maybe it would have lasted longer if they’d let me on there. Ah well. Next time I’ll get my shot at ephemeral fame come through. In the meantime, I’ll just have to keep believing that I’m too brilliant for the world to ignore forever.

I got into Town Hall station and walked out. In the lobby there was a fellow playing flute and beatboxing at the same time, his flute case open in front of him. I dropped a two dollar coin in, and listened to him play a few numbers. He did Wanksta by 50 Cent and some Beyoncé track.

When he finished the track, he said “Hey, thanks man. I notice you’ve got a guitar on your back.”

“Yeah, tough to hide it. I’m auditioning for Australian Idol tomorrow.”

“Really? I won that.”

I looked at him with an amused expression, thinking “Okay, what’s the punchline?”

He said “No, I really did. When they put on Joel Turner and went looking around the country for beatboxers, I was one of those guys. My name’s Daniel McPherson, but they call me Fluteloop. What’s your name?”

“Jones.”

“Jones…?”

“Brixton.”

“Nice to meet you. Yeah, I performed in the Sydney Opera House, stuff like that. Then I decided to break off and do my own thing.” Do your own thing as in play for change at the train station? Though I have to admit, his case was pretty full.

I shook his hand and he started playing again.

The next morning I woke up. I looked at the pink card. It said I should go to Taronga Centre – “Just around the corner from Taronga Zoo.” I took the Ferry to Taronga Zoo. As it turns out, Taronga Centre isn’t “Just around the corner”, it’s about two kilometres walk up the road, in the blazing sun. Okay.

Executive producer Greg gave us a little motivational speech. “The judges aren’t going to ask you if you want to try again for a second chance. If you believe you can impress them by singing another song, don’t ask them if they want to hear another song. Just start singing. We’ve got a lot of people to get through, and they’re going to be hard on you unless you give them a reason to be otherwise.”

Now as far as I can ascertain, everyone who goes in to see the judges in the morning is put on as a joke. Everyone that goes in the afternoon, is put on as a serious contender. I didn’t know that at the time though. I was put on in the morning.

The guy before me went up and sang his heart out. They rejected him about twenty times before he convinced them that he should go through.

“I just argued with them until they said yes,” he told the cameraman. “I’m a pretty good arguer.”

It was my turn to go on, my chance at stardom. My chance to embarrass myself in front of a nationwide audience of millions… Should be fun.

Of course, they have a brilliant team dynamic when you get up there. Four judges. This is before Mark Holden got kicked off the show for doing too much cocaine (as rumour has it). They’re all fake as hell. You get up there and think Kyle is in your corner.

“That wasn’t so bad actually. I kind of liked it.”

The next minute he’s saying something extremely offensive in a subtle way.

“Now let me hear you do some Eminem. Rap some Eminem for us.”

“How about you guys give me a topic or word, and I’ll rap about it.”

“Nah. I want to hear some Eminem.”

This was the most intense social pressure I’d ever been subject to, ever. These days, I’d be able to handle it no problem. Back then, not so much. I was holding it together though. It didn’t hurt that I had never watched the show and didn’t even really know the judges by name.

Marcia was the worst though. She’s pretending to hate what I’m doing, and pretending to be polite about it.

“Okay… It wasn’t so bad. It was… peculiar.”

Then Dicko wants to have a crack.

“You rhymed ‘adventure’ with ‘mention’. ‘Convention’ would have rhymed a lot better.” It also wouldn’t have made any sense, Dickhole.

“Hey, who’s the rapper here anyway?” I said with a grin.

“Obviously not you,” he retorted. I laughed.

“Look, I’m sorry. You’re just not what we’re looking for,” said Marcia.

I conceded, and walked away. I gave it a fair crack… I got further than most.

I walked down the stairs and the cameraman got in my face. “So do you have anything more to say to the judges?”

“No, I think I said everything I had to say.”

“But do you have anything to say in rhyme?”

“I said what I wanted to their faces.” I pictured a sore loser on American Idol, coming down and saying “Yeah, that judge can kiss my black ass!” when a few minutes earlier he had been polite to the judge. No thanks.

I came and sat down. They were interviewing a sixteen year old rocker, wearing a leather jacket. His name was Matt Corby.

“Now, remember: You’ve got to speak in full sentences. What I say isn’t going to be on the video. What’s your name?”

“Matt Corby.”

“Full sentences.”

“Oh right. My name is Matthew Corby.”

“Okay Matt. Now tell me why you want to be on Australian Idol.”

“I dunno, I just thought I’d come and give it a go. Thought it would be fun.”

“Okay… hm. Tell me what inspired you to come here today.”

“I like making music and thought it would be a laugh. See how I go, you know.”

The camerawoman got frustrated and said she’d come back later.

Matt turned and talked to his friends. “I don’t understand why they’re being like that. They tell me they want to find out about me and ask me to talk about myself, but when I do it, they get frustrated like I’ve given them the wrong answer.” What Matt didn’t understand was that the camerawoman wanted to get him to show some passion, excitement, or determination. They didn’t want to show a video of him to the Australian public saying he was coming there just for a laugh, considering so many people go there with their hopes and dreams resting on it. They wanted to portray him as a champion.

He went into the room with the judges and just aced it. A great musician – I just hope his PR skills have improved as well.

I picked up my guitar, and went home.

A few weeks or months later, I was knocking on doors on an Energy Australia retention campaign. “If you stay with Energy Australia for two years, we give you a month’s free electricity, or a three month’s subscription to the Sydney Morning Herald. Which do you prefer?”

“Uh… free electricity I guess.” $35 a piece. Easiest campaign ever.

Just then I got a text from Venezia. “OMG you were just on TV. So awesome!!!”

“Really? How did I come off?”

“Great! They were like ‘Just when we thought there was no talent in Sydney, we found out it wasn’t all bad’ and then you came on!”

“That’s perfect.”

Then I got home and watched the video. It wasn’t perfect. Venezia had misheard the voiceover guy.

“Just when we thought Sydney couldn’t get any worse… it did!” And then I came on, beatboxing O Fortuna. Obviously opera beatboxing wasn’t quite as marketable as I thought. I sounded terrible.

But the good thing was… nobody noticed. Not a single person said to me “Hey! You’re that guy who was embarrassed on national television!”

Instead, Missy Fitzsimmons, who was supposed to be the hottest girl in 10th grade when I was in 11th grade, came up to me at the Belmore and said “Aren’t you Jones Brixton? Your brother was on Idol wasn’t he?”

“That wasn’t my brother. That was me.”

She swooned a drunken swoon. Missy had auditioned for Idol about three times and never got past the very first round.

“Hey, good job on Idol buddy!”

“Didn’t I see you on TV the other night?”

“I knew you looked familiar!”

To the people of Maitland, the subcommunication of me being on TV was much more important than the overt communication of me being a muppet. Job well done.

Kurt says:
man… had a 2 outer hit against me last night
for a $200 pot
-·=»‡«=·-Rü$kl_ï£z-·=»‡«=·- © says:
wow
hurts
Kurt says:
yeah. i played it perfectly though
all in money in with a set
i added this girl from /b/ on my msn the other night. she said she was a stripper from nz
she got on webcam and showed me her boobs
-·=»‡«=·-Rü$kl_ï£z-·=»‡«=·- © says:
serious?
thats great
haha was she hot?
Kurt says:
she was alright
fake boobs
normally i’d have to pay $NZ 30 to see that
heh heh
-·=»‡«=·-Rü$kl_ï£z-·=»‡«=·- © says:
LOL! hahaha
is that wat she said? haha
Kurt says:
hahha no
just that she was a stripper
she posted a pic on /b/ of her and her friend at work. there was a chubby naked girl in the background, just hanging out
like in the changeroom
-·=»‡«=·-Rü$kl_ï£z-·=»‡«=·- © says:
haha
howd u add her?
Kurt says:
grabbed my balls and prayed she wasn’t actually a dude
have you ever been on /b/
-·=»‡«=·-Rü$kl_ï£z-·=»‡«=·- © says:
course i have
Kurt says:
haha
your’e a regular huh
-·=»‡«=·-Rü$kl_ï£z-·=»‡«=·- © says:
haha oh ye
life time membership
Kurt says:
well she posted something saying hey i’m a stripper this is a picture of me on the right i’m really bored and drunk lololol here’s my email
and of course everyone is like pfft that’s not really you
“it’s a trap” etc
meanwhile, while they were fapping to pics of underage chicks wearing gogo boots
i added her and saw her tits
-·=»‡«=·-Rü$kl_ï£z-·=»‡«=·- © says:
haha well on msn theres not much to lose
Kurt says:
yeah that’s right