Hubris.co.nz

Oh look, now that I have handed in my behemouth (read: three times my usual word limit) article on my favourite band for Pulp (and I hope you’ve already gone out and bought the one with Zach Braff on the cover, cos it’s got about six things I wrote in it, and I’d really like you to, kthanx), I have some headspace to devote to my own website. Of course that doesn’t actually mean I have much to say, besides the usual rants and raves about being lonely.

I miss flatting with friends. My house is nice and all, but y’know, I just don’t get no hugs. And I really like hugs. I do get snuggles though from my very clever brave hunter who caught his first mouse yesterday and brought it inside to his food plate before I realised what was happening and threw it outside – where he proceeded to joyfully toss it up and down and around and around. How come killing things is so damn cute? And in other questions I want to know the answer to: which of you guys is it running Oh The Scandal? I’m recognising more than a few of those stories…

Last Saturday night I went to a party at Karen’s apartment. It was her flatmate’s masquerade 19th birthday, and as such, it was full of young gay boys and skinny fag hag girls who work in retail. I dressed up as a pirate – no one else did, which made me laugh. Needless to say the music was pretty
fucking hideous, but Karen and I just sat on the couch drinking bellinis and mocking so it was alright. Some of the people were lovely – I got accosted by a guy who works behind the MAC counter who told me to come in and get some decent brushes so that my eye makeup wouldn’t be so clumpy (I tried explaining that it was from the 100 yen store in Tokyo ten years ago), and also suggested I should start wearing individual false eyelashes – to which I replied that I don’t generally even comb my hair before I leave the house. Ahh well. He told me that I shook my booty much better than anyone else there – which is of course totally true.

In forty minutes or so we have work drinks to farewell Kristen. I’m anticipating not feeling very well tomorrow, as is generally the case after drinking at work. Speaking of work drinks, let me start another rant about how much I’m hating men lately. For starters, there’s all the stupid people on myspace.com who want to be my ‘friend’ without knowing anythign about me at all other than what was my favourite picture of my nipples. Then there’s the guy at Zebos last Sunday night, who looked like JeremE. Now, we were there for our work Xmas party, so it was pretty early, like 9pm or so, on a Sunday, let me remind you, so there was no real drunken-end-of-night excuse. Anyways, I went to the bar to get some more drinks and this guy started going “oh, vodka lime and soda, you have to be careful of that drink”. Now see, vls is a drink that I absolutely can’t get drunk on, so I’m like, you fucking pussy, and then he started going on about how I should try a rum, lime and soda, and so I was like “but rum comes back to get me the next day” and he was like “but it’s nice” and me being nice figured I’d just smile and nod and be friendly, so I was like “and I guess the good thing about drinking rum is that you get to pretend you’re a pirate” and he just gave me a totally blank look, so I was like right, doesn’t like pirates and there’s a cute lovely boy in the other room who I want to get back to, this guy isn’t going to get much more of my time of day. He asked how my night was going and I said we were having a work party for the magazine and he was like “oh you guys have been going for a couple of years now haven’t you?” and I was like “ummm, yeah, 73″ (although actually I think it’s 64) and he asked me what I did and I said I was the advertising manager and he was like “ooh you could make thousands of dollars” like seriously, and I was like “well it’s (such&such) media, so yes, I do literally make thousands of dollars – and that’s it” and then I couldn’t take it anymore so I left. Dick. Okay, so he was mostly harmless, but I’m just annoyed because why the fuck can’t someone decent take a shine to me for once? I have witty sparkling wit and charm to share. Y’know? Sheesh. All I’m asking for is a pash.

So is anyone else out there ridiculously lonely? I suppose it’s partly my fault for not really leaving the house this weekend, but I wanted to. I wanted someone to call me up and take me on an adventure, to drag me laughing through the streets, to dance with me, make me laugh, make me cry, make me feel something other than the usual “there is a piece of me that’s missing” nonsense. But alas, it was not to be.

I found myself saying in an MSN conversation that I am starved for physical contact, that I am like a baby in a Romanian orphanage. I probably stole that analogy from a Coupland book. I did just finish reading Eleanor Rigby after all. I am totally afraid of getting old alone, but then again I am totally afraid of being 24 alone. And 25. And 26. Etc. Today I watched Lost in Translation with K and every shot of Tokyo made me teary eyed. I still feel like I have something over the people in the film though (although I guess at least Scarlett Johanson gets to look at her boobies every day) because I could vaguely understand most of the Japanese in the movie. When I first moved to Tokyo, we lived for two weeks on the 28th floor of the Keio Plaza in Shinjuku (where the hotel in the movie was), so even though I was ten then, everything was very vivid. It’s amazing how well Tokyo is captured in that movie. I sometimes wish I could tell people about what it was like growing up there, besides the usual “I was bullied at the horrible American school” (speaking of which, they keep writing to my parents for donations, the other night after a few drinks I almost started a letter back to them asking for the money I spent on counselling), like the smell, and the noise, and the time trhat I saw a man pushing a handcart covered in little glass bells for sale and there was wind for the first time that year and it was the last day of sixth grade and every single one of the bells was ringing. I can’t do it justice, but I think Sofia Coppola did.

I can’t remember the other things that I wanted to write about. Maybe it was a plea for some company, conversation, contact. A hand on my back between my shoulder blades, a hand on each of my hips steering me in another direction, which brings me back to Tokyo again, 5150 and the guy is 35, so twice the age that he thinks I am, and he thinks Beth shouldn’t be smoking and that I shouldn’t be hanging out with her, and that’s ten fucking years ago.

You know how when you really really love something, and it’s worrying you, you can’t concentrate on anything else? Well, that’s what I was like for a couple of nights last week, and boy did it suck. I’m sure that there was some stage of my life in which I was actually articulate and interesting to talk to. I’m sure that I haven’t always been a mad crazy old lady with cats. Really.

But Sebastian didn’t come home last Thursday night, and didn’t show up in the morning before I went to work either, so I was stressing. My stress continued even when at 3pm I was down in the main office to send a fax and my Big Boss told me to come into her office and have some beer. Well, I wasn’t going to argue with that, and we were soon joined by Katy Troop who was looking for me. We were trying to build up a stack of jugs to the roof but achieved only half of that by 5pm, when it was decided that we would adjorn to my house, since Amanda lives just down the road from me, where we could check on Seb’s status, and drink some more wine before going to Katy’s for dinner, since Katy lives around the corner from Jessie, at whose house I was schedualed to attend a party later that night. Right.

Somehow we made it onto the bus, and back home, but there was no sign of Sebastian, waaah, and it stressed me out big lots more. Amanda brought us two bottles of her parents’ wine (as in, made by her parents, rather than from their liquor cabinet) and we ate fish’n chips, broke glasses and tried to find the hottest lesbian bits in Buffy.

Eventually we cabbed it to town from Amanda’s, and wandered up to Katy’s via Liquor King (who probably shouldn’t have served us, but meh!). Much much drinking took place at Katy’s, and gossiping, so consequenlty I now know far more about my boss than is probably decent – but it was all incredibly amusing. Just before midnight I finally managed to get my ass off the couch and so Amanda and I went down to Jessie’s. I have mentioned before how distraught I was about not knowing where Seb was, right? Well, that’s all I could talk about. I’m sure that I used to be able to talk to cute boys and flirt. Really, I’m almost certain of it. But not on Friday night. Oh no. I had to be all “but he’s my son!!!!!” like a thousand times. Yeah real great. The only actual conversation I remember having that didn’t revolve around Sebastian, however, did involve me telling my boss about my failed application for my dream job and my still amazement that I even got an interview for it (and my subsequent unhappiness that Bomber got the job), and she told me that no one actually expects me to reach my target this year, that they’re grooming me to stay on a while. So that was really nice to hear. Yeah.

I got home at 4am and could hear Sebastian crying, so I started crying, and was stumbling around trying to figure out how to jump a large gate when Venita came home and convinced me to wait until the morning. In the morning the gate was open and Sebastian was still locked in a workshop. Inadvertently trying to bust him out the drummer in the band of a younger brother of a Datsun got covered in sawdust. The morning was all somewhat of a blur to me, I was still very drunk. When the neighbour finally released Sebby, I cried some more. Waah waah waah. Way to impress hot young rock boys.

Karen rang me on Friday and said “You know what I’ve been thinking about all week?” and I said “Chummeez?” and she said “yes” and so we made plans to have dinner there. I think we did really badly with our ordering. Some words of advice? Unless you like things that are squishy, avoid the stirfried tofu and vegetables dish. The tofu is icky squishy wobbly like it shouldn’t be, and the dish has the most revoltingly textured mushrooms in the entire whole wide universe in it. They’re like jellyfish with cellulite and a bad case of ebola. Blaaaaaaaaaargh. And the kung pao chicken was very average and the sizzling fish with Singapore sauce was very cornfloury. It might have been an off night for the kitchen, cos the waitstaff were still very friendly and lovely and all, so I will continue to recommend the place – if you don’t order the above dishes. Cool.

I took the bus into town with her, after I’d finished faffing over what I was going to wear and had brought the twins out (that’s Mary-Kate and Ashley to you, sir – and believe me, Mary-Kate seems to have been totally cannibalising Ashley). She told me that what was actually Pirie St was Elizabeth St, so I got all confused except for the fact that I’m not that dumb, but it is damn hard to read street signs in the dark without your glasses, so I was worried about getting lost, but I found my way there in the end – passing by the flat that I’d wanted to move into, and also those people on the street, but I didn’t greet them in case they thought I was stalking them… which uhh of course I wasn’t.

Eventually I got to Katy’s, and sat down and had a bottle of wine with her and Puck. Kristen and Kartini were already at Mike’s party, but we were in no hurry. At least, I thought we weren’t, until Puck started a series of toasts which very quickly finished our glasses, which was of course his clever plan all along. Genius! I’m going to try that one some time. So yeah, it was off to Mike’s place for the party then. He apologised to me for being rude at Karen’s house, and I was like, well, apparently she slapped you, so you obviously deserved it, so let’s call it even. I may have downplayed the fact that I don’t even remember him being at Karen’s, since I was throwing up in the shower at the time, but that’s beside the point.

The party was fun! I got to talk to Lisa about high school (she was two years behind me, but voted for me in the student rep elections cos I put an L7 line on one of my campaign posters – “wake up and smell the coffee, or just say no to individuality”, so she rocks) and she was like “you’re so cool, I should
totally hang out with you more often!” so I was like awwww. Kristen was waxing lyrical about Interpol so much that I feel the need to buy their album even though I’ve only heard it in the background. We also talked about knee-melting lines from songs like “I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life…” and “you’re my forever” and so forth. I had a big argument with someone about the magazine that I work for, because he is paranoid and thinks we’re out to get him (as opposed to actually just reporting the facts). He did no good for his own character. I wonder if he knows that he makes himself into a caricature? Nevermind. Another guy was openly starring at my Mary-Kate&Ashleys all night, and after muttering something about being afraid i was going to have a wardrobe malfunction said that yes, they really are very nice breasts. That was kinda hott – I think being that open is somehow much less sleazy than being ‘discreetly’ sleazy. Plus, he reminded me of Justin, so it was pretty amusing. Brad showed up unexpectedly cos I’d texted him the address, feeling very much like a North Shore person whilst doing so, since he was walking home and was actually in the neighbourhood at the time, so it was, as usual, lovely to see him. Polls were done on whether or people would rather go out with a ninja or a pirate, and as hypothesized, girls said pirates and boys said ninjas, with the exception of the caricature boy, who declared he’d rather be with a pirate “because they have ‘p’”, and then when I asked if he was worried about scurvy he said that he’d get all his greens from his pipe. And he thinks it’s the magazine that makes him look ridiculous? Righto.

Anyways, eventually around 3.30 or 4 or something, we decided we’d head on down to Sandwiches cos Ayna was supposed to be djing. Katy said that she wished she was a lesbian but she was put off by the thought of girls tasting like fish. I pointed out that if she’d ever kissed a guy after he’d gone down on her then she’d know that wasn’t true, and she concurred and we honked each other’s boobs. I was very tired at that stage, so shortly after we got to Sandwiches I decided to call it a night, knowing that I was supposed to be meeting Matthew Holloway for coffee at midday the next day, or in eight hours time, or however you choose to view time, and that i would also have to go and see my parents in the afternoon to pick up the rest of my crap, and I didn’t particularly want to be completely dead when I did that. As it happens when I woke up at 11am (after having got up at six am still staggerly drunk to feed Sebastian) I was far too ill to think about getting up, so I had to postpone coffee, but I was doing okay by the time Mum and Neil came to pick me up at two.

The pickup of my stuff was remarkably easy and drama-free. Carrying the boxes and all the drawers up the steep staircase in my flat wasn’t so easy, but hey, that’s life. They also told me that KateB was in town, so I texted her and she came around to watch DVDs, which meant that I missed going to see The Brunettes, but them’s the breaks.

Sunday I spent sitting in the sun devouring The House of Leaves which was fine, until I continued reading it when it got dark and my skin was crawling in terror and I was debating never leaving my bedroom again incase the hole in the roof of the bathroom swallowed me. I still haven’t finished it cos I’m waiting til I can read it in the daylight again. Scary scary book. It’s currently stuffed in my sock drawer, but it still makes all the doors in my house more creaky and it still keeps me awake.