Monday, November 26, 2007

Phlegmy Friends


My Saturday night.
I hadn't really been expecting much; I left my house around 8.30pm and walked to the train station. I was meeting up with mates for dinner in the city who had been at the soccer. I'd been invited but I was too much of a tight arse to fork out the $40 for a ticket. I prefer to spend my Centrelink pocket money on beer.
Thankyou tax payers. I had a job once but it was lost along with my respectability.
That day, like pretty much every day since I finished school for the year a few weeks ago has been spent in a cocoon of nothingness with the clock on the wall being the only thing that changed slightly. Time had seemed to pass in great chunks with very little detail being distinguishable between one hour and another.
It was pathetic....... no, I was pathetic. Actually that shouldn't be a past tense.

The train ride into the city was exactly like a thousand ones before.
Saturday night sees only the usuals.
Guys in bright fluro t-shirts with spiked hair, talking loudly and already tipsy, trying to catch glimpses of high-steppers (frocked up chicks) outside their carriage windows. Hooting and cat-calling when one or two is triumphantly spotted.
Girls in bright dresses and high heels, plastered with makeup as thick as icing sugar, clucking amongest themselves like a flock of chooks, squealing and squirming everytime a cock walks through the door.
I always feel reminded of the farmyard when ever I step outside the sanctity of my house.
Material really is the thin line between us and animals. Though I suppose animals wouldn't have waited and subdued their urges had they run into each other. We just wait until later when we are maggotted enough to act on our instincts. Dark alleys and club toilets are natural habitats for such behaviour.

Then of course there was the usual helping of loud bogans that always seem to be on trains but never seem to have destinations.
The ones behind me were loudly declaring their success as drug dealers, pacing up and down the rows of seats screaming into their phones in that famous lilt of theirs' I do love to impersonate.

I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights when I stepped off the train at Southern Cross and was met with flocks and flocks of screaming fans returning from the soccer. Toting flags and scarves they blindly bumped into me, disappointed to see I carried no team colors to be harassed over.
As I pulled myself free, feeling my skin dripping with contamination (haha, yeh bit melodramatic) I found the stairs that were empty due to most favouring the escalators that didn't ask for unnecessary exertion.
In the usual haunt I found my three mates wedged between a wall trying to take refuge from the crowds that flowed like waves, threatening to sweep up any debris that fell in their path.

As we walked I slowly dropped my irritation with the crowds and became more animated, finding great entertainment in watching this little cop grab one drunken looney and pull him to the ground.
"You think maybe he needs a hand?"
"Nah he's a cop"
"But he's soooo wittle!"
"I'm sure he makes up for it"
One raised eyebrow later and the knob jokes began.

We walked to Crown and found an upstairs restaurant that dealt us a Kiwi waitress who didn't smile.
"Maybe she has bad teeth"
"That's no excuse"
"You want to suddenly see yellow, rotting teeth when you've just begun your meal?"
"I've got the stomach"
We added brown sugar to the water and mixed it till it looked like piss, handing it back to her asking for more.
She showed no expression as she took it back.
We tried harder.
The water and sugar was called upon again to make a concoction that disturbingly resembled phlegm.
When Kiwi walked past I would suddenly be hit with a coughing fit that required me to grab the closest napkin (already planted with the yellow substance) and splutter into it, holding the napkin up open and fully visible to her and several other tables in the vicinity.
"Ohhhh that's better!" I'd croak, peering into my apparent creation, "Ohh that's a nasty bugger!"
Kiwi looked on blankly.
Our attempts for a reaction became less subtle.
Our tools were modest but we used them to the best of our ability, but got no reaction and surprisingly weren't kicked out of the restaurant either.

I had more to write bout, but yeh I'm lazy and can't be fucked.

Bon Apetite!


2 comments:

Xavier said...

Lana,

Looks like I have the rare honour of being Grand-Master-First-Commentor, though I am surprised you haven't had many more - this is some darn good drivel.

Re: what you did to that poor waitress, you...are pure evil, but you are also quite funny, so I forgive you.

I like your brutally honest and somewhat crude yet charismatic writing style that can only come from a country girl :P, and your stereotypes of Melburnian youth 'tribes' are spot on - put a smile on my face.


Xavier

Confucious say: "better to piss into the wind than against it"

Lana said...

Xavier mate, my shout for the next round of virtual beers.
REALLY REALLY appreciate the awesome comment, I actually feel like a solid substance now. Haha.
Cheers bud.

P.S- the waitress walked into it, that'll learn her for not smiling. Take note all non-smilers otherwise there'll be some phlegm coming your way shortly:D