I turned a slab the other day and for the first time ever I feet that I’m getting on a bit in this life. I reckon twenty five will probably yield an even deeper sensation of ‘old balls’, but twenty four really does feel a little strange. It’s all good. At 24, you’ve still got license to act like a goose if the opportunity presents itself, a license that in truth, probably doesn’t expire until 30 at least. Maybe the license never expires. Maybe I’ll keep up the goose act well until my dwindling years, when I one day search into the mirror and find that I’ve metamorphosed into one massive wrinkle. A wrinkly old goose with old balls. Bring it on. I’ll still be having fun. Complaining about the temperature of my soup, whacking people in the shins with my walking cane, playing the Benny Hill tune while I repeatedly slap my own balding nut. It’s going to be great.
Coinciding with my slab birthday was the marriage of my good mates Evsy and Rebsy, the second couple in our tight school friendship group that have succumbed to the glory of matrimony. This event contributed in making me feel a little older. Various events have marked this progression over the years. First it was the twenty first parties and the consecutive months of free piss and good times. Then it was an engagement, a bucks nights, the marriage of Bartletts, and now a union of Winstanleys. That’s two of the fellas down…one begs the question as to who might be next.
Anyway, age be buggered. The wedding on Saturday was a truly awesome and rocking day. I worked the 7.30 shift in the morning and could barely contain my excitement at the large day ahead. I suited up, not in the baby blue safari number that would have led to my castration at the whim of the bride, but a suit that normal people would wear. I startled most of the backpackers at work in my uncustomarily dashing threads. The day kicked off well. I sat in the audience and ogled the bridal party as they trundled magnificently down the aisle of the Arts Centre pavilion, all suits and blue dresses, gracing the stage in a frontline of unity. Big Evs beamed as his new bride’s big brown eyes made their way down the red carpet. I’d never seen the man so relaxed. He would explain this later at the reception – how on earth could he be nervous when they loved each other so damn much. I sat and spectated on as another two of my great friends declared with candour their undying love to each other. We all looked on, our little family of friends, and beamed reciprocally at the frontline. Love swelled and permeated the room. I was left with nothing but warmth in my heart and a shiteating grin to boot.
After a warm, succinct ceremony, we took some photos, drank some juice, mocked Wibo’s tie and laughed at Corno’s busted arse shoes. I indulged in the usual sparkling borax with Buckmaster, caught up with the gang, got prepped for a big day. The girls looked a treat. We began to smash piss at Bear Brass, and after a couple of hours of liver priming, made our way through the chilly city streets to the swanky Park Hyatt. Wak dissonant horn harmonies filtered out from megaphones perched near the Yarra and offered an unsettling Tim Burton eeriness. The Park Hyatt was A-grade swank. All polished timber and marble. Beers were offered by men with trays, not to mention little balls of risotto salted to perfection. We found our seats and struggled to go through a single glass of wine without a member of Hyatt staff topping it up with fervour. Wibo would remark how quickly he was getting pissed, and the commencement of random headbutting was a visual cue as to the level of his inebriation. The food was delicious, the plonk plentiful. All the fellas talked shite, everyone mingled and proceeded to have a blast. Table six and table nine formed a ’69 union’ and stuck it up the collective arse of inferior table ten. MC Dipper really made the night a special one, providing the perfect balance of sparkling repartee, ceremonial duty and light humour. Dip made it real, and truly was the master of this ceremony.
The circular room was decked out Bollywood style. Behind ornate archways and flower laden pillars, the bridal party sat at the head of the round polished dancefloor like royalty. We shook our clackers in the Bollywood vein, but i struggled to keep up and probably looked more like i was doing the nutbush. In red satin gown and pointy, light tan slippers, Big Evs looked like the Sultan of Brunei. Rebs, adorned with bling and glamorous in matching red was his Queen. We rocked out to Bollywood dancing, we drank litres of booze, the night seemed like it would never end. Bruno Grollo was there.
Whitey and I liberated a bottled of black label from the bridal table and shared it around. Memories towards the end became more fleeting, more difficult to encode into long term memory. But it was undeniably a magnificent and wonderful night. I was inspired by the love that Evs and Rebs were sharing, the dedication that they’d made to each other, this huge decision they’d made to be united forever.
We kicked on and lapped up the extra hour thanks to daylight savings windback and after waking up in a strange bed at a random, unfamiliar house at roughly 4.30am, I slapped my two-tone shoes on blistered, squished feet, thrilled to find that I was only a few streets away from my house.
Another marriage down, another milestone, and another marker of our progression through life. Next it’ll be the thirtieths, the increasing conception of little tackers, the cycle of life accelerating, and all the joys that come with it. Congratulations Evs and Rebs, I can’t contain my tremendous happiness for you both. Thanks for an awesome night. And sorry for pinching your black label.
25.3.07
19.3.07
Facial Hair and Waterfights
I was fossicking around my hoard of personal effects and computer files the other day and came across a whole bunch of old shite.
Anyway, i thought you cats might like to take a trip down my memory lane.
The year is 2005, i'm living in the laundrette, the overseas trip is still a vague pipedream, and life is swell...
19/10/05
Some would say that twenty-two is no age to be complaining about.
Despite the increasing sense that the weeks appear to be slipping by at Spaceball-esque ‘ludicrous’ speed, there is much to be happy about in the newfound clearing of early twenties country. The mindless years of incapacitated brain function and non-stop wasted naivety have begun to trail off into nostalgia terrain just as life becomes a little less hazy, and finally after all these years of patience you manage to grow some decent bloody facial hair. That’s all I ever wanted back in year twelve, some thumpin-ass sideburns like my mates Chode and Dipper, and that jock named Dogga who got recruited to play senior school football because he resembled the combination of (a) a 25 year old brick shithouse, and (b) Sasquatch. Alas, my coming of age years were spent with dismal attempts at any sort of facial styling, burdened with a smooth baby-arse face and subsequently very little visible masculinity. But now I’m 22, and there’s scratchy, unkempt, crazy hair all over the shop. I am man, and you best hear me roar!
You’d think I’d be happy about all this, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all just a little bit too little too late, that the novelty has worn off. Four years down the track, I really couldn’t give a rats clacker about the state of my hirsuite-ness, especially considering I never really shaved my sideburns once the first side patches of hair became visible, and now that they’ve grown out a bit they look like an Advanced Hair transplant from my pubic region. Sideburns - no, ‘Mingeburns’ - perhaps, or maybe ‘Sidepubes’ – there really isn’t much ‘burnin’ going on at all - hardly the lush, rugged rockstar strips I’d craved all those years ago. The hair dream was not as I’d dreamed but rather a whole lot of hassle for very little return – hair that could have been brought to my attention and probably cherished four years ago, but is now just a forlorn mish-mash of half assed goatee and Sideminge.
A bit of an anti-climax.
Still, I shouldn’t complain - at least I fared better in pubescent development than Tom, my Grandfather, who’s diminutive stature throughout high school caused him to be perpetually donned ‘the Mouse’. Although, I should add that puberty finally hit him with gusto at the age of eighteen, shooting him up 3 feet and prompting his chums to elevate his nickname to ‘Mouse King’. A rags to riches story if ever I’d heard one - in a swift few months of pubic fury my ‘pappy was a monarch. Thankfully, I was no mouse, nor any sort of mouse royalty – mine was a relatively smooth, hiccup free transformation, granted, more akin to the mouse extremity than the Sasquatch.
Its one thing to finally feel like a hairy man after all this time, another thing to realise that you aren’t getting any younger, that your rate of hair growth seems to be permutating in direct correlation with the increased responsibilities of ‘adulthood’.
So it was refreshing last Sunday on the first really hot day before summer, to take a mental vacation back into the mindset of a sweaty thirteen year old, and pelt a large group of neighbourhood pre-pubescents with an commanding artillery of waterbombs. All it took was one bomb to smack the side of one kid’s head before the street below our second story balcony was littered with thirty random ten-year-olds, eager to be hit next and retaliate in turn. The bombs flew back and forth for a good three hours, and our mate Dodgy Rogers hooked up a catapult system that proved demoralising for the pre-pube army. Ahh it was great.
For half a day my mates and I felt like kids again, reliving the carefree era when jumping through the front yard sprinkler and declaring war with water were the orders of the day, and shaving your face was still a good seven years off.
Eventually, the cheap water balloons from the local two dollar shop ‘Crazy Price Everything’ became scant, and Suzy the old Greek lady across the road started yelling “you bloody kids, bloody” and began throwing small rocks at our opposition in a bid to deter them from her water supply. The kids were right to be afraid of Suzy, because she ain’t no dreamboat, she’s hairier than me, and frankly, water bombs are funny and rocks just hurt a whole lot. Surrender was inevitable.
The battle was won, albeit through an extraneous Greek ally, but the war had only just begun, and this was comforting to know. For, as long as the water bombs keep being pelted, and youthful reminiscence comes back every now and again to pay a visit, no amount of facial hair will ever let me forget how to have fun like I did when I was a kid, nor force me to take the rigours of adulthood too seriously - not even if I get to be as hairy as Suzy.
Anyway, i thought you cats might like to take a trip down my memory lane.
The year is 2005, i'm living in the laundrette, the overseas trip is still a vague pipedream, and life is swell...
19/10/05
Some would say that twenty-two is no age to be complaining about.
Despite the increasing sense that the weeks appear to be slipping by at Spaceball-esque ‘ludicrous’ speed, there is much to be happy about in the newfound clearing of early twenties country. The mindless years of incapacitated brain function and non-stop wasted naivety have begun to trail off into nostalgia terrain just as life becomes a little less hazy, and finally after all these years of patience you manage to grow some decent bloody facial hair. That’s all I ever wanted back in year twelve, some thumpin-ass sideburns like my mates Chode and Dipper, and that jock named Dogga who got recruited to play senior school football because he resembled the combination of (a) a 25 year old brick shithouse, and (b) Sasquatch. Alas, my coming of age years were spent with dismal attempts at any sort of facial styling, burdened with a smooth baby-arse face and subsequently very little visible masculinity. But now I’m 22, and there’s scratchy, unkempt, crazy hair all over the shop. I am man, and you best hear me roar!
You’d think I’d be happy about all this, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all just a little bit too little too late, that the novelty has worn off. Four years down the track, I really couldn’t give a rats clacker about the state of my hirsuite-ness, especially considering I never really shaved my sideburns once the first side patches of hair became visible, and now that they’ve grown out a bit they look like an Advanced Hair transplant from my pubic region. Sideburns - no, ‘Mingeburns’ - perhaps, or maybe ‘Sidepubes’ – there really isn’t much ‘burnin’ going on at all - hardly the lush, rugged rockstar strips I’d craved all those years ago. The hair dream was not as I’d dreamed but rather a whole lot of hassle for very little return – hair that could have been brought to my attention and probably cherished four years ago, but is now just a forlorn mish-mash of half assed goatee and Sideminge.
A bit of an anti-climax.
Still, I shouldn’t complain - at least I fared better in pubescent development than Tom, my Grandfather, who’s diminutive stature throughout high school caused him to be perpetually donned ‘the Mouse’. Although, I should add that puberty finally hit him with gusto at the age of eighteen, shooting him up 3 feet and prompting his chums to elevate his nickname to ‘Mouse King’. A rags to riches story if ever I’d heard one - in a swift few months of pubic fury my ‘pappy was a monarch. Thankfully, I was no mouse, nor any sort of mouse royalty – mine was a relatively smooth, hiccup free transformation, granted, more akin to the mouse extremity than the Sasquatch.
Its one thing to finally feel like a hairy man after all this time, another thing to realise that you aren’t getting any younger, that your rate of hair growth seems to be permutating in direct correlation with the increased responsibilities of ‘adulthood’.
So it was refreshing last Sunday on the first really hot day before summer, to take a mental vacation back into the mindset of a sweaty thirteen year old, and pelt a large group of neighbourhood pre-pubescents with an commanding artillery of waterbombs. All it took was one bomb to smack the side of one kid’s head before the street below our second story balcony was littered with thirty random ten-year-olds, eager to be hit next and retaliate in turn. The bombs flew back and forth for a good three hours, and our mate Dodgy Rogers hooked up a catapult system that proved demoralising for the pre-pube army. Ahh it was great.
For half a day my mates and I felt like kids again, reliving the carefree era when jumping through the front yard sprinkler and declaring war with water were the orders of the day, and shaving your face was still a good seven years off.
Eventually, the cheap water balloons from the local two dollar shop ‘Crazy Price Everything’ became scant, and Suzy the old Greek lady across the road started yelling “you bloody kids, bloody” and began throwing small rocks at our opposition in a bid to deter them from her water supply. The kids were right to be afraid of Suzy, because she ain’t no dreamboat, she’s hairier than me, and frankly, water bombs are funny and rocks just hurt a whole lot. Surrender was inevitable.
The battle was won, albeit through an extraneous Greek ally, but the war had only just begun, and this was comforting to know. For, as long as the water bombs keep being pelted, and youthful reminiscence comes back every now and again to pay a visit, no amount of facial hair will ever let me forget how to have fun like I did when I was a kid, nor force me to take the rigours of adulthood too seriously - not even if I get to be as hairy as Suzy.
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