Grim IV

Jason McGathry is a fuckwit, but he’s a fuckwit with a pool table so they all seem to let him hang around. Personally, I like going to dark pubs if I’m to play pool. It’s not often that I get the desire, but when I do it feels more right to do it in a huge room that smells of beer and cheap women than in a place that is vacuumed twice a week and has a lampshade in the shape of a Hawaiian dancer. We make it out into the parking lot, where there is no big fight with Sam, and all pile into different cars. Jan and Francis are catching a lift with us and unconsciously reserve the front seat for Samantha as we wait for her to stop negotiating with the others over who will pick up what from where. I realize that as I look over them I wouldn’t recognize their names even if Samantha had told them to me.

“Are we off?” I ask as Sam approaches. I know she hates obvious silence breaking questions, but I figure that she owes me.

“Yes.”

We all piled into the car and made our way across town. Melbourne is pretty, all in all, but it's like civilisation was dropped from a great height upon the Yarra. With a mighty, but well contained culture splash the CBD sprung up like priest's erection in church. It's national significance may be under debate but it certainly is frequented by a trendy swath of our residents. They live in refurbished office apartments that have been hollowed out and redecorated to allow them to feel like new yorkers. The splash came down hard in areas like Brunswick and St Kilda covering these inner suburbs with a combination of trendy and derelict. The splash died early on the flatlands to the west and rolled south to the sea, dribbling along the Great Ocean Road. But as the ever widening circle of immigrant clusters slowly jumped its way eastward from suburb to suburb towards the rural dream that they heard of in their home countries, one ethnic group vacating an area only to be replaced by the next in line, the resulting waves rippled outwards getting softer and softer. Jazz clubs turn into pubs which turn into sports bars which turn into pokies venues. At the very edge of what you could reasonably call Melbourne where only the very young home owners or the very old farmers live there is a void. I'm not too sure what it's devoid of but I know that I sense it whenever I wander the shake-and-bake housing complexes of Carolyn Springs or the dirges of Frankston.

We made our way through the city on a road that circumsected the city like a virtual arterial. We could drive from the heart of Melbourne to Sydney without using an indicator. But we're only going to be on this road for a while eventually we would have turned off into a seemingly random suburb and park in a seemingly random driveway. The others were chatting about a new book that was advertised on Oprah - goliath of a woman. Some people seem to begat industries and she is such a woman.

I’m not sure at which point in the argument about whether the Oprah was smarter when she was fat or now that she’s thin the shit brown 1996 corolla smashed into the side of our car and caused us to spin out of control across the three lane highway, but what I can say is that Jan continued to talk right up to the moment of impact. The crash caused all the windows on that side of the car to smash instantly and in unison. We were all thrown around our seats like rag dolls tied to a centrifuge as the car hit the median strip and began to topple over and over onto the opposite side of the highway. The entire event happened as if in slow motion yet I was strangely calm about the whole matter. In fact I distinctly remember being upside down at one point looking over into Sam’s rolling fearful eyes and thinking that this would mean we’d be the last to choose from the good pool cues. We smashed up against the other side of the highway, the sounds of crunching glass, metal and microfibre replaced by the sounds of squealing brakes and women.

Grim III

The Last Event was still a couple of hours away so I went to the bar to buy another round of drinks. I had to push my way through the room, most people gave way but a few had to be maneuvered around. As I walked I wondered what it’d be like to just flip out and punch someone. I’m a great daydreamer - if I’m bored, sitting in a doctors surgery or waiting on the train I find myself entering an argument with an absent friend or imagining what it’d be like if I randomly punched someone in the crowd. The thing is that some of the time, I’m not the hero of my imaginings. If I had smacked a poor drunken loser who was too busy gesticulating to see that I was trying to make my way through then he’d most likely fall broken and bloody on the floor. But his mates would rush me - one would collide into my chest and push me back into the crowd while the other would run around looking for an opportunity to get a good one in. I’d be down on the ground trying to defend my face as the crowd would part and circle around like seagulls on a small boy holding sauce blooded chips. They’d squawk and chant as his second friend would back away to let it be a fair fight, besides it looked like I was getting the worst of it anyway. Perhaps I’d see Sam’s excited but disappointed eyes as the huge lad sat on my chest and pummeled me. Perhaps she’d dump me, perhaps I’d be able to get out of here.

I loaded the drinks onto a tray and carried them over to the table, carefully navigating past a gorilla in a fifty dollar suit flinging his arms about as he explained why Donnie Darko was the best movie ever made. I nearly turned back to fulfill my pummeling fantasy but then cowardice got the better of me and I continued on to our table. Sam smiled up at me as I put down the jug, and handed out Lemon, Lime and Bitters to those whom I knew weren’t drinking. She liked it when I played the big man and bought everyone drinks but I hate it because I felt like was buying into a dying image. I sat next to her but her attention was back on the track. In my absence she’d somehow managed to place another large bet on a trifecta. I put the remains of our winnings on the table, and wondered what it’d be like if she dumped me after a huge screaming match in the parking lot.

“You’re fucking insane, it’s just a fucking movie!”

“Hey, you always fantasize about those trade-y wife-beater assholes and now that I finally act like one you go all crazy”

“Oh don’t you fucking turn this on me, this isn’t what I wanted. You’re so anally fucking repressed it’s surprising you didn’t crack years ago!”

“Crack! I haven’t cracked, I’m just obeying the idiotic trans-fucking-dimensional representation of a psychotic bunny!”

“Fuck you, just… fuck you.”

“God, I hate that movie.”

After going to the hospital to have myself checked out, I’d go back to my apartment and wonder at how easy it was to separate her from my life. It’s strange that after four years of dating we never even moved in together. I’d look around my three room unit and mentally count the number of things that she left in my apartment. A toothbrush, a single lost sock and the Director’s Cut of Saving Private Ryan.

“You okay?” Samantha was tearing up a betting slip.

I grunted in a smiling way and put my hand on her leg.

“I don’t like it when you get that look on your face.”

“What look?”

“That one, the one like you’re arguing with yourself. All of your terrible ideas come from that look.” Her friends laugh and the conversation moves on. We’re running low on money, so they all suggest that we head back to Jason’s house to play pool. They all stand up to leave and I glance over to the untouched jug of beer. It looks like I’m going to miss the Last Event this time, but at this stage in the proceedings I’m too far gone to care.

Grim II

Samantha is a marvelous person really and most of the time we get along brilliantly. She's the only person I've ever dated that I don't feel that I have to chatter at constantly, perhaps trying to fill the silence so that I never have to know that we have nothing to talk about. Sam and I have never needed anything to talk about. We met through some friends at a party I can't remember why I was there as I don't particularly like them. Now, years later, they've been long since relegated to "her friends" rather than "our friends". Regardless I did find myself, that many years ago, leaning up against the weatherboard lined banister of a backyard porch nursing a warm beer that had only managed to kiss the ice in the bath tub before it was removed and passed out to the surge of newcomers. It was a housewarming, or a going away party, even then I wasn't sure. There were large groups of people that were coagulating in popular gathering areas like the kitchen, or in the middle of the hallway, leaving the living room relatively empty. I was wondering why people tend to gather in such places and what it was about those places what made them so "gatherable" when I was awoke from my revere by a scream and laughter. Sam was down on the lawn play fighting with a couple of the other guys, it seemed so reckless and stupid to me at the time. I couldn't admit how much watching her pin some guy turned me on because I was vitally aware of how vitally aware she was of every single guy watching her. I was disgusted and walked away.

No, I didn’t particularly like her when I first met Sam and I liked her friends even less. They were the social types - they went to gatherings and organized theme nights. They dressed up and talked about football, they discussed politics but religion was an unspoken taboo. They were bright eyed and intellectual but they were dull mouthed and went to great lengths to ensure that they never said anything that was in any way controversial. They were beautiful cowards.

I found myself at the front of the line and the lady behind the glass was looking at me expectantly, I gave her my winning ticket. For some reason at that moment I almost expecting her to curse my luck, as if it were her money personally, but she barely registered my existence as she gathered the thirty dollars winnings and handed it over. She didn’t call for the next person, she didn’t ask if there was anything else she could help me with - she simply starred at me with sardonic eyes waiting for me to step sideways.

Grim

The line was long and posted with many warnings and advertisements. I knew I shouldn't be here, but I just had to if I wanted to see the Last Event. I had my ticket in my hand and a large mobile phone in my pocket - surely I could get out of here alive. The floor was sticky from years of alcohol, blood and the last tears of those many losers who had too much of the former and too little of the latter. A chime went off and outside a huge window that covered the length of one wall horses sprung from their gates, cheered on by the swarm of desperates. I hate crowds for they depress me and make me cynical. The truth is that not everyone at the race-day was a desperate, there were nice people here, social people who simply wanted to go out and spend their money in a creative and entertaining way - they should not be punished for their sociality. But they will be.

The line moves along slightly and I look down at my ticket, my girlfriend and I won the last race, or came second or something, which meant that I had to line up and collect "winnings". In truth, we were far behind. The room was filled to almost bursting with people. It must have been a special day for racing or something as there was little room for moving about. Anyone who wanted to go to the toilet or to the bookie's booth had to try to shove their way though, leaving a wake of people like a knife dragged through dirty dish liquid. There were tables and chair's here that looked like they'd been stolen from train-station waiting areas or the very dingiest of beer gardens. A couple of sheets of butcher’s paper had been taped to the tables in an effort to give it a semblance of that restaurant look. Every now and then you'd see a whole table would rise and leave one guy who was designated table holder and make their way to the huge yellow-light buffet which held tubs of McCain’s chips, lasagna and basically everything else that can be cooked in a commercial oven and left under a heat lamp for five hours without losing it's golden glow. I hadn't yet been brave enough to assault the buffet yet. I’d have to wait until I got a bit drunker. My girlfriend is down there at the window sitting at the best table in the house that we'd reserved by arriving a full hour early. Her unknowing friends always commented on our luck.