Friday, 15th August, or Thereabouts – Tagging Along For My Wingman And Losing A Day To Alcohol
There is a curious wet feeling on my face. I’m aroused and intrigued. I open my eyes. There is a dog licking my face. His name is Huckleberry. I swat him away. It’s dark in here, and it’s dark out there too. It’s 10 pm; I’m somewhere in Footscray, lying on a stranger’s couch.
What happened to my Saturday? It’s been stolen… sort of.
What happened last night? What happened this morning?
I went to 3 Below on Swanston to hang out with SS and Jake. This colleague of Jake’s, Paul, got a bit excited and spilt a beer all over my pants.
“I wish I could say that was the worst thing that’s ever happened to my crotch.”
There was this fiddler playing on the corner of Swanston and Collins. Jake said she was probably the best busker he’d seen in Melbourne. He started doing a jig on the footpath and I joined him.
“Hang on, hang on. Haven’t I met you before at… the Evelyn?” I asked her.
She looked receptive.
“And I came up to you and said ‘Haven’t I met you before?’”
And she said “Ohhh yeah. You said you thought I was some girl who was playing guitar on Brunswick Street and improvising a song about grandmas not wearing panties!”
So I met a girl once who was busking on the side of the road. Two years later I met a girl in a bar who I mistook for that girl. Three months later ran into the second girl again on the side of the road while she was busking. Maybe it was the same girl all along.
Paul is standing there, trying to be obvious about trying to look sneaky about stealing some change from the violin case. Shell is dealing with him friendily and coolly.
Jake turns to me and says “So what are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m spoken for and it seems like you want to move things forward here. Consider me your wingman.”
I suddenly become aware that Shell is gazing at me or us intently. I smile. Then I laugh at Jake saying it so obviously in front of Shell.
I say to Jake “Nah, actually, I have a girl at the moment too. Something different.”
But I get Shell’s myspace because she seems cool. It’s her music myspace.
Then we head off. Went to Lounge. Bouncers said, sorry no more guys allowed.
Went to Baroque – sorry, guest list only. The bouncer said we should check out Club Retro. I’d heard of this place.
“That place – nasty. There’s wiggers downstairs, fashion goths upstairs, and just plain gayness upstairs, downstairs and probably in the toilet stalls. Do not go to that place. It’s shit.” Link told me a month ago.
“Hm… Alright, you’ve convinced me. I’ve got to check this place out,” I said.
We paid $15 each to get in, walked in, looked around. I turned to Jake and said “Man… I’m sorry.”
There is no wiggers, but this place is dead. It smells like a sweaty fat 15 year old girl who just finished her shift at KFC.
Some chick looked like she was making a funny face at me, so I went over, grabbed her hand, and twirled her around. She was puzzled, stunned, and excited. Really, she hadn’t been looking at me at all but it was too late now.
“Hey, can you dance?” I asked as I slow danced with her.
“No, I can’t. I’m retarrRRded,” she said in a rhotic accent.
“Oh, are you Canadian?”
“No. I’m just retarrRded.”
“Retarrded, I’m Kurt”. She giggled at my lame dad joke. I love lame jokes. I twirled her again.
Then her friend came up and I put my arm around them both and started dancing. After about ten seconds, the friend takes her hand off me as if she were picking up a piece of garbage, and gave me a look that said “uh huh… I don’t think so.” I mimicked the look to Retarded and she cracked up. Retarded gave me a high five and they walked off.
We went upstairs. No fashion goths. The floor is big, dirty, black and white checkers. The whole floor is a dancefloor, and they’re playing some lame shit. You know that song “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Meatloaf? They didn’t play that, but they certainly could if they wanted to.
Then this girl Jess is like “Heeyy!! I remember you from Transport! You can dance better than that!”
I said “Sure, but I have to match the gayness of my dancing to the gayness of the music. Listen. I don’t mean to offend you, but why in the holy name of flaming fuck do you come to this place?”
She’s like trying to make hand signals to explain because her voice isn’t loud enough. They make no sense. “Cheesy music! Big dancefloor… MMm… good.”
There’s a vending machine behind me, and I walk up thinking I could get a Mars bar or something. Instead I can only choose from a selection of condoms, flavoured condoms, edible condoms, and glow in the dark disposable dildos… they didn’t have my flavour.
Fast forward about half an hour, we’re at Pony. Goth chicks in corsets are out in force. Check-out timez.
It seems like every half hour from 2 till 5 I’ve been texting Adam, and every time he says: “Yeah I’ll be there soon. I’m just around the corner”.
In the meantime I’m meeting random strangers and dancing to the band who are probably playing for beers. On the last song, the rhythm guitarist is playing the chord progression over and over slowly while the bassist tries to follow. The bassist doesn’t follow, and the lead singer says “Fuck it” and jumped off the stage. That was the end of the set. The bassist curled up into foetal position while he waited for the drummer to pack up.
This guy Toby comes up to me and he jumps in my face.
“No one up in this mofucker is dancing!”
I shake his hand and start shaking around the dancefloor like a possessed preacher. …And the crowd goes placid!
Half an hour later I run into this guy in the couch area upstairs, and I say: “Hey Toby! Good to see you buddy! Party timez bro!” and I shake his hand. He nods his head and smiles, sort of. This chick standing with him stares at me blankly
“Who are you?” she inquires in an extremely puzzled tone.
“I’m Kurt, and this is Toby!”
“His name isn’t Toby. Who are you?”
“My name’s Kurt, have you met Toby?”
About five minutes later I realised that I’d just been talking to some guy who wasn’t Toby at all, and looked completely different, except that he had the exact same distinctive haircut.
There’s this chick. Her hair looks like Mercy’s, it’s black and curly, a little past her shoulders. Her name is Liz.
“I’ve got to find my friend Tom! He’s Thai! He’s got ecstacy.”
I’m not sure exactly what happened next, but half an hour later Jake had gone home and I was dancing with Liz while she smoked a cigarette. Adam finally showed up and met us on the dancefloor.
“Hey Adam! This is Liz. Liz, this is my friend Adam.”
Adam said “Hello!” which is probably the greatest pick-up line ever, and in three seconds he was molesting her on the dancefloor. She was impressed favourably.
“Adam. You’re wasted aren’t you.” I said.
He turned and grinned “Yep!”
Next thing I know, I’m talking to Liz’s friend Sarah and she pauses and says: “Wait. Your friend Adam is dancing with my friend Liz. They’re making out. She told me to make sure she’s celibate for three months.”
“Yeah, but Adam is my friend, so that trumps that rule.”
“Yeah. But Liz is my friend, so I have to look after her.”
“Yeah, but Adam’s playing with a half-deck, just got a full house and rolled two sevens. Blackjack! House takes bank.”
The things I do for my wingman. 
“I see your point. These pills are not kicking in, man.”
“Tom didn’t pull through with the goods, huh.”
“That’s right. They were bright pink which screamed of being dyed. I’m not pinging at all… but my headache has completely disappeared!”
“I’ll keep him in mind next time i’m chasing codeine forte.”
I go to take a piss and i’m talking to Adam in the toilet.
“What’s the deal? She said to me ‘Yeah Kurt’s been flirting with me the whole night.’”
“Yeah. Sounds accurate.”
“Haha. It was so easy, I just waltzed right in and took it.”
“Sure, only ’cause I warmed her up for you.”
He chuckled.
An hour or so later, I’m sitting on that couch in Footscray, sitting next to Sarah. Adam and Liz are on the other side of the room on another couch. I’m drinking Coopers and smoking apple from the sheesha, watching the Last Waltz. Sarah is trying to tell me that Bukowski hates women. No way. He’s fascinated by women, and he doesn’t understand them at all. You just think he hates women because he never sugarcoats. He talks like a man would talk to men. She says I might have a point.
Then she tries to convince me that Che Guevara and Hitler are pretty much the same person for like 20 minutes. I’m wearing my Che shirt by the way. She gets really fired up about it, and pretty much tells me that all my idols are murderers. By the end I say “Okay, sure, you have a point, you’re right.” I’m not sure if i’m just trying to shut her up, or if she just destroyed my faith in humanity. One or the other. Not really though.
“Okay, you’re right.”
“NO I’m not RIGHT!” She’d even argue that.
I growled and tickled her. She was probably annoyed that I didn’t crack on to her.
Adam is talking to Liz and I pull out my phone and text “So are you going to fuck this chick or what?”
He doesn’t respond to the message, maybe his phone is on silent.
We go into the kitchen and grab another beer. “So are you going to fuck this chick or what?”
He gives me a sort of vague answer. Maybe he has whiskey dick.
A little bit later, Sarah picks up an iPhone off the kitchen table and says “is this your phone?”
“No, it must be Adam’s”
“It has your name on it.”
“Let me see.”
I take the phone and it says “Kurt Robinson: So are you going to fuck this chick or what?”
Sarah says “What does it say? I didn’t read it.”
I look at her and study her. She looks like she’s telling the truth but there’s no way she didn’t see that message. I hand it to Adam and we both start laughing.
I don’t remember falling asleep. But I do remember that when I woke up, I heard Liz moaning from the other side of the flat.
“Yes!” I thought. “My work is complete!” and vanished into the night.
P.S. i just found an extremely enigmatic message on my phone from 12:43 pm on saturday. “if ur pull here, my silk’s shit and i’m downstairs”. I don’t know what it means or who it’s from but I’m turned on.
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