Hubris.co.nz

We flew out of Wellington on Anzac Day, 1991. I think it was a Thursday, and I know that the weather was crappy. Because it was a holiday more people were able to come to see us off. KateB was there, with her mother. My sisters, maybe Oma and my aunt, and my mother’s ‘friend’ from polytech. I hadn’t been on an airplane since we’d moved back from Germany, apart from a jaunt to Nelson to see Alexis, so I was concentrating on being excited about that instead of all the other crap that had been going on for the past while.

It’d been a somewhat difficult couple of months. Mum didn’t want to move back to Japan, and she made sure that everyone knew that. One night we went out to dinner at Flanagan’s (now Sandwiches) and she and Neil fought so extensively that all I could do was sit there and cry while my sisters tried to comfort me by talking about how we could build igloos out of the potato ‘bricks’ that the menu had promised. I was saying in my head then “it’s alright for you, you get to stay”. I wished like fuck that I was in sixth form, or my first year of university instead of being ten. I wished that I was allowed to go to boarding school instead, even though I realised that boarding school probably wouldn’t be the fun and games that Enid Blyton’s Saint Clare’s books made it out to be. But it couldn’t be worse than Raroa, the school I’d never bothered to get heavily invested in because I knew all along that I’d be leaving.

And since I was leaving, I fought with Kate more than usual, blowing up at her during a lunchtime game of The Game of Life, running off to the bathroom to cry while my friends took turns trying to comfort me. When lunchtime was over and we were sitting in a circle on the mat, one of the boys asked Mrs. Petez, my sworn enemy, why I was crying, and she started on some spiel about how everyone needed to be more sensitive. I choked at what I saw as being her total and utter hypocracy, and so I got up and ran out of the room again. I sobbed hysterically in the bathroom for a while, as you do when your world is like, totally ending, and then tiny little Frances showed up and took me on a walk around the field where the cold Wellington air blew on my hot feverish cheeks in a way that I found to be very dramatic, and I was certain that a character in a Judy Blume novel would feel the same way. When I returned to class I was asked to go and see another teacher – one that I actually liked – to talk about it, and so I sat in a spinny chair in a library resource room and tried to explain how Mrs. Petez hated me and how Kate was like, totally insensitive, or whatever it was that was making me so angry. Of course Kate and I made up and I stayed at her house the day that the movers came to pack up our boxes. My mother made sure to leave my sisters almost nothing, as her way of saying “I am angry that you are not coming too”.

Of course, leaving had its benefits too. I wasn’t supposed to be allowed to get my ears pierced until I was 12, but one day we were in Hataitai for some reason, buying flowerpot bread from a bakery that I think is now the Bellagio Cafe, and Mum said it would be a good idea for me to get my ears pierced then, so that they wouldn’t be too sore on the plane. I got little pink sparklers, of course, and studiously cleaned and rotated the posts, but even so a lot of my hair got caught up on them and my ear swelled up later in the hotel in Japan. Leaving also meant shopping sprees, and being allowed to buy not only Tiger Eyes but also Forever, Mum evidently having chosen to forget our discussion about the grammatical mistakes in that book about how they came when they were already there, and her incredibly awkward explanation about “whitey fluids”. Our flight to Auckland was all about hot stuffed crossaints since we were in business class, and I peered through the curtains at the plebs in economy with their packets of cheese and crackers and decided then and there that I never wanted to be one of them. Then we got a shuttle from our travelodge hotel into Newmarket and Mum spent up large on me. I watched The Simpsons (it may have been their first ever Halloween special) that night and talked to Karen and Anji on the phone – they already seemed so far away.

The Koru Lounge seemed really strange to me – I couldn’t understand why people would need the showers there, but the idea of free food was awesome. The plane was fitted out with a camera out the front, and onscreen maps about the distance to Tokyo. We were in business class again, so there was free champagne or orange juice while we were waiting to take off. I got to go up and see the cockpit later, and there were constant deliveries of peanuts and playing cards. It was pretty much my idea of heaven. I played around with the different radio stations and watched Home Alone and Fried Green Tomatoes. The three-course lunch had Tiramisu for dessert and to this day I often think it’s a Japanese thing, and for dinner there was John Dory in a champagne sauce. I’m not sure why these things are etched so firmly into my memory, but they are. I think the hard thing about being ten is that you’re still a kid, but you’re not really a child – especially not when you’ve had to leave your sisters behind. The flight attendents couldn’t just give me some stickers and a colouring book. Well, maybe they could have. I probably had a stuffed toy with me, although I’m not sure which one. Maybe Chi Chi the monkey.

It was of course nighttime when we got there after the eight plus hour flight, so I couldn’t see what Tokyo looked like. The Narita runway was picked out in green lights and it looked spooky. Our plane landed right after a flight from the Philipines, so customs was jammed. I’m not sure if Neil didn’t know then that our red diplomatic passports could have sped us through the line, or if he just didn’t want to be ostentatious about it, so we had to wait an eternity to get through. According to Mum’s diary, (and yes, I read it when I was twelve. I’m not proud), I was really good the whole time, even though I was probably about dead on my feet. I think a well-timed sugar hit from leftover airplane lollies might have helped. The bus to Shinjuku from the airport took another two hours. I may have dozed a little, but my eyes were just too big gobbling up all the signs in a language I couldn’t read, and Mum and Neil would have pointed out landmarks that they knew from the first time they were there.

The Keio Plaza hotel is two towers joined together at the base. The lobby was huge, and featured the biggest ’80s style chandalier I’d ever seen, all square-like and sparkling. I stared at it while we checked in, Neil probably fumbling to remember his Japanese while everyone from the front desk staff down to the bell boys in their green pillbox hats probably knew enough English to see us right anyway. The tallest tower is 47 floors, the other, in which we were staying on the 28th floor was 34. Always before whenever I’d stayed in hotels, I’d been in at least an interconnecting room with my parents. This time I was in a big room with two double beds all by myself. Over the next two weeks I would come to relish that space, and feel Very Very Grown-Up in there, but that night, despite knowing that my parents were just down the hall and only a phone call away, I was terrified.

Okay, so a couple of weeks ago I had four nights in Auckland, and such is my obsession with Rockstar: Supernova and my lack of laptopness (update: it’s with Bond & Bond for hopefully fixage), and my surprisingly large workload (project managing. Me. Whodda thunk it?) that I have yet to write about it. So now I will.

Wednesday
I flew up on Wednesday 12 July in the afternoon. My shuttle picked me up way too early and my flight got delayed so I can happily report back that Wellington Airport, while better-looking than Auckland, is incredibly boring. Still, finding a $25 Whitcholls voucher to spend on magazines is nice. One of these days, I really must get myself a subscription to Q since it’s the only magazine that I read which I totally respect. I mean, apart from Pulp, of course, but I hear the music reviewer for that genuinely likes the Spice Girls, so what would she know? I was staying at the Comfort Inn again, this time in a one bedroom suite that captured all the afternoon sun, so that sucker was hot. Crazy Aucklanders thinking that they’re in winter when they so aren’t, everyone’s heater was turned up way too high. The suite didn’t have a bath, unfortunately, but the shower was oh-my-stars-I-think-my-scalp-is-being-caressed-by-angels strong. And it’s always nice when no one has written on the walls of the bathroom in their own blood (Smoo is so fucking feral. That’s not part of my Auckland story, but seriously, who the fuck does that? Bart cleaned it up for me when I expressed my total and utter disgust. I wish I’d taken a photo first, because it was actually kind of funny).

First up on my Auckland agenda was meeting Annabel for a drink up at the Odeon. I hadn’t seen her since 2001, but we’ve had many an online conversation since then so it didn’t seem too unnatural. Once the Odeon started giving us the dirty “We’re closing. Get the fuck out now” eye, we went over the road for another drink at Galbraiths, and I decided that I should platonically set her up with Heather, since they live near by each other and have a lot in common.

After that, it was back to my room to try and get a nap in before the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Holy crap that gig was overflowing with gaxys and hipsters! I’m pretty sure that every tight pair of black jeans, little op shop dress and Karen O haircut was in attendance. Drunkenly. And noisily. Holy crap there are few things I hate more than drunk 18 year old girls. I don’t understand why the fuck someone would pay over $60 for a concert ticket and talk the whole way through it. I had to restrain myself from punching people. I should have moved away, but as I was feeling so very old – I arrived while the Mint Chicks were playing and instantly cursed myself for forgetting ear plugs -, I was standing at the back behind the padded barrier and laughing at people who tried to walk through it. And wishing that I was Karen O, of course. I liked it when she screamed, because all the stupid bitches shut up for half a minute. They played songs I didn’t know, and drew out the beginnings to many things, and she writhed around under pieces of shiny material. I waved my fist in the air for ‘Phenomena’ and the long-intro’d ‘Y Control’ and got teary when they came back for their encore with ‘Maps’. I also spent a lot of time thinking about other gigs I’d been to at the St James, including the Roni Size gig where I took e for the first time, and the True Colours gig when I didn’t realise I was going to fall for the boy I’d just left sleeping. Afterwards I thought about taking the bus back up the hill but I couldn’t stand the gaxys anymore so I taxied back up for more glorious showers, even though my feeling-oldness had kept my moshing and therefore my sweatiness to a bare minimum. Man, no wonder it takes me so long to write these kinds of entries, I go way too overboard with details. Nevermind.

Thursday
The next morning I had brunch at Benediction with Elisabeth from Pulp and this time I successfully managed to keep from calling her Carla even a little bit. She said nice things about my reviews, which is always pleasant to hear (who’d have thought that good feedback would be like, good? Woah Jo, you’re out of CONTROL), and loaded me up with many more CDs, including the new Muse, which made me squee with joy. But on the inside of course, because I was pretending to be a cool Aucklander. A cool Aucklander who was nevertheless very impressed when the electronic bus timetables on K’Road proved to be quite accurate. I headed off to Grey Lynn to meet up with Jessie, and so I got to see her very posh offices. Then we went for lunch at Delicious, because I’ve always heard good things about it. Holy fucking crap, that place is delicious. We had bruschetta, and then I had roast beetroot ravioli with smoked ricotta, and every mouthful was like a thousand orgasms. We lingered long over it, and then gave the dessert cabinet the glad eye. After some quick agonisations, we decided to share a piece of pistachio praline chocolate ‘cake’, on the grounds that while their tiramisu also looked amazing, it was more common. The cake was pretty much like tiramisu anyway, with the added bonus of pistachios. Wow. It was like dying and being brought back to life and being fed really fucking awesome sweet desserty treats, without having to die and be brought back to life. My similes are fucking rocking today, I must add.

She dropped me off at Real Groovy so that I could cash in $50 worth of booksellers’ tokens on records: You are free by Cat Power, Funeral by the Arcade Fire, and most exciting of all, Horses by Patti Smith, which was the reason I bought a record player in the first place (now I can totally satisfy all my own fantasies – well as far as sitting on the floor playing myself Patti Smith records goes, anyway. Although my record player is a little too high up in order to do that comfortably. Perhaps I should rearrange my room). Of course I ended up having to spend twice as much as I had in tokens, and the same thing happened in Farmers when I was using vouchers to buy more foundation and also lip gloss because goddamit, I haven’t bought any in a very long time, thank you very much, and no I don’t have an addiction, fuck you. Then I went up to Rakinos to meet Sam for a coffee. Well, I had wine, he had water, and he talked a lot about sales techniques. It made me laugh.

After that it was back to my hotel to be incredibly disturbed by Juice TV (why oh why did anyone let Panic! At the Disco record a song that contains a line “haven’t you people heard of closing the goddam door?” in such dreaful all over the place timing? Their phrasing is like a thousand times worse than the Manic Street Preachers or Silverchair, and that’s saying a lot. Not to mention emo as fuck. I wish my hair was emo so that it’d cut itself. Heh), read, and nap some more. I love holidays with their rich nappy goodness. Around 7.30, I headed off to Annabel’s house where I had arranged to meet Heather before our dinner. This meant I got to meet Elton, which was very choice, and the girls got to meet each other too, instead of just stalking online. We had wine and watched Rockstar and Heather and I were having such a good time we asked if it wouldn’t be too weird if we got our food and ate it there. Annabel pulled out a folder of menus, so we took that as a sign, and Heather went and fetched us Meekong. Mmmmmmoney bags. Mmmmmmmmmmm so much tofu. Mmmmmmmmm goodness. Thanks for dinner Heather – it was an awesome birthday present. Eventually though we had to tear ourselves away as we were due to meet KateH at Match Bar to watch Sam play.

Sam had said that Match has a crappy crowd, but myyyyy god I hate the rich white trash even more than I hate the faux emo gaxys. Not that I judge people on sight or anything, but why the hell are you bothering to order Moet by the bottle when you’re so drunk that you break your glass every time you go outside for a cigarette? We were sitting close to the doors and counting broken glasses, and there were at least eight over the course of the night – from a fairly small crowd. Some of the guys got so drunk that they had to be carried down the stairs. Not pretty. It was lovely to catch up with KateH. We sat and talked for a long long time in egg shaped chairs, and then once they were done playing we went to Denny’s with Sam once he was done trying to get KateH to buy in to his pyramid scheme. By that stage it was after 3am (Did they play ’3am’? I’m pretty sure there was at least one Matchbox 20 cover. Ahh covers, good times. KateH and I laughed and laughed and laughed) and Auckland was drowning in mist. You couldn’t see the Sky Tower, or even more than ten metres in front of you. It was fucking excellent. So pretty and spooky (*).

Friday
Friday had been booked in as Heather’s and my Cultural Day, but I was feeling a little sloooooooow because I’d got to bed after 5am. I met her up at Altezzano and nearly fell flat on my face a couple of times. That whole walking thing is kind of tricky sometimes. We decided that the counter food on offer was not enough for people who’d had salty $18 tequilla cocktails the night before and so we made our way down to Galbraiths. It was about 11.45 at that stage, and Galbraiths was shut. Oh the horror! We needed our greasy NOW! Or rather THEN! Instead we strolled down to the House of Knives to browse amongst the shiny objects (but not the Shiny), having our minds boggled trying to figure out who would own a $1600 knife block. I mean, yes, good kitchen knives are important, and I’m gutted that Horrible Jonny stole my chef’s knife from the famous samurai sword village, and I wish that Del had gotten around to steeling my current knife before Bart broke up with her, but $1600? Woah. We strolled back up to Galbraiths and joined the throngs – and there were throngs – who were also doomed to waiting outside because it was late in opening, but eventually we made it in, ordered large plates of meat, and took our beers out to the back garden. The last time I was in the garden there, it was my last day of work at the Med School and I flashed my cow-orker so that I could win our staring match. The time before that was before the Placebo concert which is a whole diferent era of life (dates! and bedding! and being asked to be someone’s girlfriend!), and boy, Auckland sure likes to stir up the memories huh? It was a gorgeous day. I rolled up the sleeves of my long sleeved tshirt as we basked in the sun and the beer made me come up with the funniest/stupidest joke I’ve come up with in a while:

Q. What’s that noise coming from the BeeGees’ herb garden?
A. It’s just the chives talking.

Ha ha. Heather had chives on her shanks, obviously. Obbbbbbbbbviously. Our master plan called for us to be going to the museum right about then, but we weren’t sure if we could be bothered walking all the way to the domain from where we were at, since we were between two kinds of public transport that could have gotten us there, but then I had the genius idea of busing down to the art gallery and taking a link from there afterwards. Of course, my genius didn’t actually extend to remembering that the 27*s don’t go down Wellesley St, and so we got off on Symonds St and went for a very big long walk down and around Albert Park (and of course on the bus on the way home we realised that if we’d stayed on the bus we could have avoided that). Still, gorgeous day and walking is good for you. The fact that my feet had been screaming at me since Wednesday was irrelevant. I like the quiet echo of the art gallery, and I’m awed by the fact that they have stuff that’s almost a thousand years old, but there were no new exhibits in the old gallery, and then by the time we were done with that, our feet were too sore for the new gallery. We had coffee on the pretty terrace up amongst the trees away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and decided to call it a day then.

More nap, more Juice TV, some vodka purchasing, and then Jessie came over for a drink. She found me in my pyjamas, because they are pale pink with skull & crossbones on them, and what is more awesome than that? Pretty much nothing. Except for italics. We had a bit of a goss, and then cabbed it up to K’Road where my darling social secretary KateH had arranged an AUT dinner for me at Saigon. I even have photos of it, see?:

Brad, who was up in Auckland to shoot a short film for his course, Shirley who was off to Europe the next day, and Nigel who was still flush from winning
48 Hours and you can view his movie here

Andrew-from-Hamilton, KateH. Not pictured: KateH’s friend whose name I can’t remember. Or me.

I think the woman at Saigon was a little bit in love with me. She kept touching me. Maybe that’s just because – as usual – I played The Dominator and chose all our food. Mostly I did really well too. The noodles were a bit unnecessary.

After dinner, we went to The Musket Room in Ponsnobby. It was pretty crowded, but we managed to find ourselves a table and Brad ate one of the mozarella balls that they brought to our table, thinking that they were complimentary, until we got kicked out of that room because apparently it was a private function. We managed to find ourselves a big table though, and Clayton showed up, hurrah!

Shirley, leaving the next day. Clayton, not hating my guts.

We had some good talks about his career, and he’s doing all these amazing things which is awesome. I also invited him to Amy’s Pirates & Cheerleaders party for the next day, because he’s always loved of the young girls. I think Brad’d had a few drinks too because he gave me a big talk on what an awesome writer I am, and blah blah blah. I say blah blah blah not because it’s ever boring hearing about how awesome I am, but rather because I’d had a drink or two myself, and so I can’t remember all the correct wording, rather just the sentiment behind it. I really liked the Musket Room, apart from the private function kerfuffle and a few girls who were a bit too foolishly dressed (White summer dresses? Really? Sienna fucking Miller called to say you look ridiculous). They were playing ‘Fascination Street’ when we arrived, and then the music mix continued to be really electic, with lots of new wave and also indie and general goodness. Plus it was so dark that I had to read the cocktail menu by the light of an obliging young man’s cellphone. But all good things come to an end, and I found myself back at the hotel watching O.C reruns before I knew it.

Saturday

Jessie and Heather came to get me at some ungodly hour of the morning, and we set off for the French food markets somewhere in Parnhell. Jessie’s magnificant parallel parking skills came in handy, and I nearly died queuing for ages in an incredibly busy cafe to get pretty dreadful coffee, but once I had the cup in my hands, and a couple of quick wine tastings, things were much much better. We tried a multitude of tasty tasty things, talked to scensters and finally settled down with big containers full of hot gnochi. Gnoochi? I can’t spell. But I can eat. Oh boy can I eat. I can also take pictures, although Jessie doesn’t like to be on the internet, so I will show you a picture of Heather instead, because she never complains:

I did mention that it was early morning, right?

I can’t remember what I did on Saturday afternoon. I must have done something, right? Oh yeah, I went and camped out at Benediction again and read their magazines and drank their much better coffee. Heather had said that she’d come to Amy’s party with me, because I didn’t think I’d know many people, but then she wavered, so I promised to pay for the taxis and buy her vodka, and that we’d only have to stay an hour if it was terrible (although I knew it wouldn’t be) and so she duly showed up at my hotel to do semi shots of Russian Cocaine with me (licks of instant coffee, shots of vanilla vodka and then licks of sugar not off a lemon since we didn’t have any), lace me up and take photos of me dressed up as a pirate:

Mary-Kate, me, Ashley trying to escape

We cabbed out to Amy’s (“Give me an ARRRRRRRRRRRR”), found our way down an impossibly long driveway, and much red pirate punch and good times were had. I got to talk to JSR and Annette lots, and Amy had three costume changes. Her speeches were done in the form of “I have never”, personalised specifically to embarrass her, which was fantastic. I talked to new and interesting people, and Clayton showed up and did the same. And then I KICKED ASS at Singstar. I was undefeated on the night, and achieved my all-time personal best score of 9200 on ‘Material Girl’. Woohaa! Thank you so much for having me Amy, even though I’m sure I overstayed my welcome. I do that a lot.

Sunday

On Sunday the lovely Jessie picked me up so that I could have somewhere to leave my suitcase all day before she took me to the airport, and in exchange I bought her brunch at Deve. Heather popped in to see us so that we could giggle at her gossip, and then she took me to her house where I sat on her bed in the sun, ate home made cookies and dozed a little for a while, before I went down to Occam to catch up with first Penny and then Bopha. Hurray! And then I cabbed to Heather’s to watch the Gilmore Girls and umm, now I really have to wind this up. Flew back in the evening, Anji picked me up. That’s all. I thought I had other bits and pieces to say, but apparently I don’t. I <3 the 09 though.

Last Friday was, if you recall, the Prom. Of course, you should all have known that from coming along, but if you did, then you’re people that I don’t know who didn’t introduce yourselves. Wankers.

But nevermind that. Let’s talk about going to Spotlight at lunchtime with Kateb for netting to promify our dresses, and how I was going to get black but the call of the pink was just too strong:

Then let’s talk about how the skies opened around 4pm and I had holes in my shoes, and my car was parked a long way away and luckily I’d given Kate the spare key to it cos I got to it late, and then we had to schlep over to Newtown to decorate the hall and I was soaking wet and freezing cold and reaaaaaally not in a good mood. Plus decorating was tiring and hard, and we were running late and Brad’s friend who was helping us kept on talking and talking and oh oh oh, just the drama of it all. But when we were done, the place looked fucking rad:

Kate came over to my place to get ready, and since I knew I needed to snap out of my grump, I went to “spend a couple of minutes by myself” (read: rub one out), before showering and sorting out my hair. Of course, we ended up looking fabulous, as the above photo will prove. We spent a while having some drinks and trying to convince Bart and Del to come with us, before abandonning that idea and jumping in a taxi. The hall was pretty empty at first, so I was very worried for Brad’s sake, and I was trying to count and do maths and things, but eventually it filled up, helped along by the arrival of these two, Katy and her flatmate:

We sat and drank coruba & coke for a while, cos it was donated, and then Brad started playing ‘Get into the groove’ which is one of my favouritist songs to dance to evah, and since my friends weren’t feeling it, I went and jumped into a group of strangers including this girl Holly:

They were very very rad people and were very complimentary of my outfit, so I decided that I was ON FIRE that night, and that everybody would be my friend. When Katy and I were slowdancing the first slowdance, I spied two boys standing at the side so we grabbed them instead and they didn’t appear to mind at all. Later I fell in love with one of Brad’s tutors (although I suspect I didn’t realise who he was at the time) when he whirled me around the dancefloor and told me to stop leading. How powerful and manly! Oh how I was swooning.

At one stage, I went outside to find Kate, and found her talking to a 15 year old kid who’d wandered up to boast about how he was on his 20th beer. When he turned around and said to the Asian girl behind him “I don’t like Asians!” I decided that was enough, and it was time for him to move on, so I went and found Brad, who grabbed a very tall friend of his and politely asked the young lad if he had a ticket. He moved on then. Apparently he was also kicked in the balls by a friend of the Asian girl. Excellent.

It was just such a fucking fantastic time. I danced and danced and danced, and although I didn’t win Prom Queen, I certainly felt like it, and so I successfully vanquished all my demons from dances at ASIJ 12 years ago. Oh yes, that’s right, all my demons. I’m totally a demon-free zone now. Honest. Here’s some more photos from the prom – if you want to see them larger, go to my flickr account page, obviously. And the best part of all is that Brad made a whole grand.

When Kate and I got home, we found Mark and Bart sitting out on the front steps drinking, so we stayed and talked to them for a long time, and I did the most awesome fall-flat-on-my-face fall ever. Radical.

The next morning, strangely enough, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus, but I dutifully rolled out of bed, showered and headed off to pick up Anji and Karen, via a ten minute wait at Macdonald’s for them to serve me up a burger instead of the ick that is the Macdonald’s breakfast. Not that their burgers are much better, of course, but this was an emergency. I got Anji to drive to Waikanae, because I still felt drunk. We went to Swell Cafe for Mum’s birthday brunch, which you might remember from the news stories about its quarter mill bronze statue being stolen. Or you might not. I don’t care either way. Ha! It was really nice there, but oh boy I was feeling ill. Then we went to Oma’s house to sort out more stuff and pick up more furniture and I puked some more and sat on an outdoor step and cried. I was very very happy to get home and unload the buffet and bookshelves.

After a nap, I went to the supermarket and made awesome sandwiches of streaky bacon, camenbert, hummus and rocket. Hurray! And I tried gingerly to drink some beer, but then switched to red wine. Around 11pm, I headed off to Nial’s house for Blair’s goodbye party. Luckily it was a very mellow night, just lots of sitting around in the very cute garden. I didn’t know people at first, but I was overly tired so I was in very giggly very saying lots of stupid things mode, so it was alright. The boy who I’d originally thought was gay talked loudly at me about how gay he was, and about how he used to make his ex girlfriend wear a Hayden Christensen mask when he flipped her over, and I felt ever so slightly embarrassed but mostly I just laughed at the things I was thinking in my head (*).I did tell the hot Canadian right as he was leaving that I fancied him rotton, and he laughed at me. Well, it wasn’t quite a “ha HA, like you could ever have a chance” kind of laugh, or even a laugh of pity, it was just a laugh and a “I’m sure you’ll get your pash this year”. And yes, I told him right when he was leaving, because I am laaaaaaaaaame like that, but at least I told him. So that’s all very well and good, and I don’t feel bad about it. And it’s good that he’s gone, because while he was a very easy crush to have, I just have far too much going on in my head right now(*). Oh, and of course he’s also a stupid maple syrup-eating surrender monkey.

Having been up until 5.30 texting, Sunday was a day for lying on the couch groaning and watching season two of the OC. I think much of the week was like that, actually. Hmm. On Wednesday I saw Capote, which wasn’t the feel-good hit of the summer. Then I decided I needed to stop feeling angsty about the number of people in my house (it’s strange getting used to having two boys and one girlfriend who is still trying to find a flat around, after living with only Anji for six months, but there’s no need for me to have a bug up my ass just because oh the pain, they’re sitting on my couches watching tv when I want to lie down and watch the Gilmore Girls in quiet), so I cooked a flat dinner for them and Brad. I was going to make a pear cake too, cos our tree is loaded down with pears right now, but when I got home, Del was already making one. Great minds and all that.

On Friday after work my workmate Sarah and I escaped down to Monsoon Poon for some very good conversation and some wine. She’s getting married in less than a month, and so she keeps asking me questions about things like invitations or social graces, or accomodation and stuff, which is fine, cos I’m happy to help, but it’s making me plan my own wedding something crazy, and hello, I’m not gettign married for another five years (that’s assuming Brad’s still single then). We were joined by the boys a while later, and then by Rene who is an ex collegue. Eventually KateB showed up to and by that stage I’d consumed quite a lot of wine. Sarah left and we had a platter of food which probably wasn’t nearly enough in proportion to the amount of wine we were drinking, and we went to Ponderosa where I watched Kate pee and she did the same to me. Not like, cos we were doing it in public or anything, just that we assumed that there would be stalls but it was one big room and so we decided to have a significant bonding experience instead. I was thinking that the bathroom looked mighty familiar and then I realised yesterday that it’s tiled like the one in Veronica Mars in which she does all her business. Ha HA ‘business’, do you like what I did there? (Yes, wow, that is a poo you should be proud of).

Somehow we managed to convince Dylan to come to a uni party with us (I did mention that the last time I went to a party at Jess’s there were both nipples shown AND a person in a panda costume), and we headed up to Kelburn via the supermarket for more wine. We probably didn’t need the wine. I had a good time at the party talking to Arthur and Brad who are at drama school together, and the fabulous Jess, and also Robbie, who as it turns out isn’t Lemon Cohen at all, and most awesome of all was that there was no one else from Salient there. Then Kate was a little worse for wear, so we decided it would probably be a good idea to get her home(*). When I saw Jess yesterday in Aro, she laughed at me for being like “omg, leave my friend alone! She’s been my best friend since we were 5, don’t hurt her!” cos people had placed flowers on her head. They laugh because after delivering that speech, I delivered Kate an all-mighty slap. Sorry babe.

Yesterday morning was consequently not much fun either, but I rallied by around 4pm when Anji and I went up to Mum and Neil’s for a BBQ. Boy it was hot, so very hot. I like BBQs. Then I went and picked up Karen and we headed over to Aro Park for the Bitchcraft carnival. I bought pretty earrings and we went and got fish’n chips and settled down on the grass to watch the Dukes of Leisure play. They looked like this:

I’m aware that you probably can’t see that much, but I’m hoping that it’s just that I have a crap monitor. If you can’t make it out, that’s a tree with a string of dead dolls hanging behind them. Anyways, the Dukes were very cool. They’re kind of sonic soundscapey like HDU or Jakob, and since I was lying on my back looking up at the stars, it was perfect. The Bitchcraft fair looked awesome when all the stalls turned on their little lamps. I felt like I was in an alternative Stars Hollow, and that is a rad thing to feel.Then I went home to dance the panda dance for Brad. I contemplated going to the Bitchcraft afterparty, but it was on the other side of town and my hands were still tingly with hangover. One of these days, I’m going to cut down on the amount I drink. For serious.

Because we didn’t want Mum to have to stress out about Xmas preperations the day after her mother died, on Friday 23 December, Karen and I decided we’d shop for all the food. If you were in Wellington, you might also remember that as the day that the skies decided to bust open and leak bucketfuls of water all over the place, along with some spectacular thunder and some average lightning. It did this especially in the time that it took me to walk to the bus stop. Then at the bus stop I had to wait a good half hour at least (where I felt stupid cos people were talking about why the buses weren’t coming, and I was like “maybe the rain interferes with the trolleys” and a guy said that it didn’t, and I was like well whatever buddy, it always does, and then ten minutes later I looked up and saw that he was wearing a stagecoach uniform), so I should have left the house later and not got so wet. As it was, I left my very soaked hoodie at Karen’s house, after I’d squeezed it out a little over the sink, and when we came back from Moore Wilson’s, it had puddled all over the floor like a puppy.

Have you ever been to Moore Wilson’s two days before Xmas? We went to the dry good section first, and it was when we were just queuing up with our trolley that they announced that eftpos was down. We waited and waited for a while, and it just didn’t seem like it was going to get back up again, so Karen went home for her chequebook. Then we went to Fresh, and the queue for the checkouts started at the door, so I stood with a trolley and nibbled the tasty things that the clever staff were bringing around to pacify customers, and Karen loaded us up with goodies. It was a surprisingly good atmosphere, despite the rain, and the waiting, and the crowdedness.

I can’t remember what I did on Xmas Eve, except for watch parts of National Lampoon’s Xmas Vacation for nostalgic value. It was every bit as terrible as I rememberd it being. Perhaps I hung out with Lisa Fur some more? Oh no, wait, that’s right, I was doing the supermarket shopping and loading up on liquor and snacks for Anji’s birthday, and I ran into Cousin Jacinta so I took her home with me, fed her beer in the sun and made her Pad Thai.

When we’d started to discuss Xmas, and what we’d planned to do on it, I’d suggested we have it either here or at Karen’s house, so that Anji could make an easier escape if she felt the need, and so we were going to have it at Karen’s, but when she started to be all “Oh I don’t know if I even want to come to Xmas” I said “well fuck that, let’s just have it at Mum and Neil’s cos that’s where I want to go, since you’re not commiting to it”. She came along anyway, and had been extensively consulted over our plan to just eat tapas all day long. Then our aunt showed up and stayed for three hours bitching away. Yes, her mother had just died. I can understand why she’d want to hang out with Mum, I really can. But she was just so so so nasty that I eventually stood up and yelled “HEY KAREN, LET’s GO OVER HERE AND DO SOMETHIGN ELSE!” and also “HEY, YOU KNOW WHAT’s COOL? MONKEYS”. Eventually we all cornered my dad in the kitchen and asked him to say something to Mum, who did get my aunt to leave. Nevertheless, it was too late, and Anji was already in a sulk about how we weren’t having a “proper meal” so she left, and the atmosphere got a lot lighter. We took turns reading The Pirates! And the adventure with whaling aloud, and ate chocolate fondue. The taxi took a long cold hour to show up, and I spent lots of money texting everyone like crazy after midnight. Well, Murray anyways.

The next day was Anji’s birthday so I got up to eat crossaints with her, but not to learn how to spell them, and gave her the birthday present that I’d really spent far too much money on – a big fake leather box filled with margarita glasses and rimming salt (heh), and Havana Club Blanco, and Jose Cuervo Gold, and canned stawberries and coconut cream and chocolate-covered coffee beans, and fortune cookies, and Scholl’s party feet, and and and umm that was possibly it. A couple of her friends came over and we had a drink or two in the very hot sun, and then she took all the food and liquor up to Richard’s house, and Lisa Fur came over.

On December 27, we had the funeral, which my mother had argued my aunt down about the need for it to be in Paraparaumu where Oma had lived for the last twenty plus years and where my Opa had his funeral. Mum’d asked us at the hospital if one of us would mind saying a few words, and since neither Karen or Anji wanted to, I said I’d be happy to, just like I had at Opa’s seven years ago, only this time I wasn’t going to be wearing an old suit of his. Much like at Opa’s, I hadn’t really prepared for what I was going to say. I knew that I wanted to talk about Oma’s legendary hospitality, and about how dedicated to her grandkids she was, without trying to raise the hackles of either my mother or my aunt, and about the chilli jam she tried to foist onto anyone who ever came to her house. The celebrant spoke about how Oma’s father had taught her to use her pencil box as a way of defending herself when she was young because she was so little, and so later another ex diplomat’s wife got up and said “Dee was the only one of us who used to play the pros at tennis in the Phillipines, and now I know why!”. It was lovely all the people who got up and shared small memories of her. Most of them also included stories about the food she would cook. I started crying when my aunt spoke of how Oma always used to order a speckook (I cannot spell that to save my life, but it’s a Dutch/Indonesian type layer cake, and when I say layer, I mean each layer is crepe thin, and it’s a mix of batter and then spiced batter so it’s all stripey. It’s quite rich so you eat it in thin slices) for all the people she knew back in Holland every Xmas, and how every single one of the people that Diz and Mum contacted to say that Oma had died mentioned that they’d just had their speckook delivered, and also that when they got to Oma’s house to start sorting out her things, they’d found that someone had sent Oma one, and so that was served afterwards. People kept coming up to me to talk about Oma, which was cool, but also it was strange, because they were people I hadn’t met before, and I had to do a lot of smiling and nodding. One woman, who was dressed in a tie-dyed outfit with dolphins on, said that I seemed to be the strongest one, and I was like “huuuuuuuuuuuuh?” and when she left she told us grandkids that there was strength in the circle, and I smiled and nodded. Because I’d ever so cleverly not had breakfast, I was starving by that stage, and the savouries were really not doing it for me. I jumped in the car with KateB’s parents to guide them to Oma’s house, and there we all waited in clumps with Aunt Leonie and Uncle Graeme who are on my dad’s side for someone with a key to show up, and we finally got to have some decent food. Then we were told to go through the house and pick out what we wanted, and jewellery was dolled out and oh my god it was just horribly painful. Not because of the emotion, although there was that too, but it just seemed like my aunt was taking out her rage about her children living far away from her out on me and Anji and Karen. Bleh. And it took sooooooooooooooooooooooooo long, and it was so hot, and fuck, it was just a horrible afternoon. It was nice to celebrate Oma’s life at the funeral service, but did we have to go and pick over the bones so soon?

We took Mum’s car so that we could leave, and headed straight for Burger King. When I got home it was after 7pm, and I knew that both Heather and Jessie were in town, so it was time to go out and have many many MANY drinks.

To be continued. Again.

Six months in a leaky boat

On Friday December 16, we packed up our offices in the morning, computers, phone cords and everything. I therefore had people yelling at me to pack up my phone when I had just received an email from my mother telling me that Oma’d had another stroke and was in the hospital again. I couldn’t reach her on the phone, so on the pretense of untangling computer cords, I crawled under my desk and cried. We lugged some crap around, and went over to the office building. Eventually I skipped out and took a bus back home for a cold shower, and my workmate came and picked me up and we went to her house to get ready for our Loveboat themed Xmas party – and for those of you playing at home, it took us exactly the length of Purple. Now there’s a flashback. Anyways, so we went back to our other work building and had drinks and then sat around on the street for a while, before being loaded up on a bus, driven down to the docks, and then walking a ways to the Sweet Georgia. The bars along the waterfront were loaded with people, and I was dressed like a bride, so I felt a tiny bit silly – although I suppose there were other people who were dressed sillier. But that’s okay, cos we got on the boat and headed out onto the harbour, and there was much food and booze and Titanic impersonations and a little too much sing-alonging. And there were DOLPHINS! A whole pod of them swimming alongside the boat for ages. And then there was anchoring at Soames Island, and ghosty stories, and eventually there was flashage, although not from me, because I was surprisingly soberish. I still went home and cried on Anji’s shoulder though, because I am a fucking idiot. You can see all of the rest of my photos from the Xmas party in this tagged part of my flickr files.

Call me loyal

On Saturday December 17, I went to my cousin Iain’s wedding, or rather the reaffirmation of their vows. It was held at my aunt & uncle’s place in Waikanae, cos they have a massively huge garden, with ponds and geese and bears, oh my. I didn’t see any bears though. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I was making the bears up. It was very very hot in the sun, but everyone looked lovely, as you can see for yourself in this part of flickr. My father tried to make a speech, which was rather embarrassing, and Karen mocked me for running away from the geese, and I kept getting locked in the toilet cos the handle turned funny, and yet it all made me want to get married ASAP please. Cheers. Oh, and Iain, if you’re reading this, Karen Anji and I were the ones who didn’t label the gifts, so the 500 thread count sheets (mmmm) and the greenstone necklace were from us. Thanks for having us, it was grand!

Crowded House

After we got back from Waikane around 11pm that night, I convinced my daddy (since Mum and Anji had gone to Oma’s house to try and catch Oma’s cat to take him to a cattery) to take me home so that I could get changed and then drop me at Kartini’s party in Aro Valley. I took nine minutes getting changed. Don’t ask me why I keep telling you how long it takes me – I just feel like telling you. Don’t mess with my self-disclosing. Kart’s party was at Nial’s house, and there were an awful awful lot of people there crammed on steps and doorways and kitchens and benches. I had a long conversation with a girl who’s in an up-and-coming Wellington band, and she made me feel special when she was like “oh, are you that Joanna – you and Heather are the people whose opinions I listen to there!” and I was like awwwwwww and we talked about what works in music and what doesn’t. I saw the boy who makes my vagina go boing, and it went boing, and there was lots and lots and lots of dancing to records. Mike played hip-hop, and then Kris (who I finally didn’t address as Jess – the name of her dog) played Atomic-y type music, and I laughed and laughed and laughed when she played ‘This Charming Man’ and then ‘Love will tear us apart’ one after another the way that the Atomic DJs always do. And then I saw Ammy! And that was very exciting because of course she left the country in Julyish 2003 and I hadn’t seen her since, and so I had to catch her up on two years in ten minutes. The party was full of creative people, from crew on Kong, to musicians, to people who talked loudly about the short films they were making. It was nice and stimulating – so much so that I was out til well past 4am, which was a capital effort on my part, I thought, considering the amount of sun and bubbly I’d had.

Oma

On Sunday Anji, Karen and I made merry at the Mediteranean Food Warehouse in Newtown, pausing not long enough for me to learn how to spell Meditblahblah but long enough for pizza, and gelato, and the buying of many, many antipasto type things (and your knowledge of Anji buying them will come back into play later)

to be continued

Last week I was totally stressed out and in desperate need of a holiday – as evidenced by me crying in the toilets at work on Thursday morning, and not even playing Appetite for Destruction over and over in my headphones so loud that I couldn’t hear the phone on my desk ring helped. Nice one. Now I am back at work and am in desperate need of a holiday to recover from my holiday, but I don’t want to stop thinking about it or talking about it cos I had like the bestest time ever. This is how it went down.

Please note: I will gradually update this over the course of the day, so if I’m still not back in Wellington in the account, keep coming back.

My flight to Auckland was pretty bog standard, the only thing that made it slightly more interesting was that the main road out to Wellington Airport was closed, so the shuttle driver had to go a different way and it made me realise that if it had been me driving I would have been stuffed. On the plane I started reading Star Man, which is a biography of Michael Francis. You’re like, “who?” and I’m like “omg, you mean you don’t know?” and then I explain that he served as a security bodyguard type person for Led Zepplin, and Bon Jovi, and Cher and an assortment of others, and then you say “ahhh Jo, when will you stop reading those rockstar biographies and return to real literature?” and I punch you in the head.

The airport bus driver in Auckland was also head-punching worthy with the way that he threw away my perfectly valid ticket that i’d purchased from a machine when I got back from Fiji for a bus that had never shown up, and made me buy a new one. Grr. I should write a letter, but you know, that would be too constructive when instead I could just sit here and bitch about it. But at least the bus dropped me off right outside the Pulp offices, where I could go up to meet the new editor, and struggle to call her by her real name instead of Carla. I don’t think I’ve ever really chatted with someone who’s been on Shortland St for a significant period of time for a significant period of time before (ha ha, do you like what I did there with that sentence?), hence why it was so damn difficult. But she was very complimentary, and said that she hoped I would continue to write for them, and blah blah, and I said I want to, it’s just that i’ve had no ideas and I’ve been really busy. But I will continue to do the music reviews cos they’re easy enough to pop out.

After that, I couldn’t get ahold of anyone who wanted to play with me, so I went down to Queen St and parked my ass in front of Crash and proceeded to cry lots, of course. Some of it was a little predictable, and some seemed a little cliched, but the way that every character was given depth, and that everyone was a villan at one time or another was really interesting. I can think of lots of people who should go and see it (you know who I’m thinking of if you read NZm). I also find it vaguely amusing that on IMDB there’s a big thread abotu how black people talk too much at the movies. Ha ha, it seems like someone wasn’t paying attention…

Then it was back on the bus to Ponsonby and to my hotel via the liquor store on Williamson Ave. I stayed at the Quest on Ponsonby, and it immediately endeared itself to me when I didn’t have to give them a cash bond in lieu of a credit card imprint. I was less impressed by how warm it was in the room, but after a conversation with reception, I figured out (read: was told) that if I turned off the air conditioning and opened the windows (which I didn’t realise were openable) and that was choice. Of course, the water feature in the courtyard was pee-making, but the bathroom was black and shiny and great, and reminded me of the bathroom in Olivia’s old Living Cube ™. Plus, halogen lights! How rad does my hair and skin look under halogen? Much radder than in real life anyways, that’s for sure.

Eventually Penny showed up to show me her wedding photos and we had a glass of wine together:

It was lovely to see her and to hang out, even for an hour. I got to look at all her wedding photos, so I was like “awwwww”. I wanna get married too! Penny was like “did you get implants?” because I was already dressed up to go out. No no friend, I just discovered the metaphorical joys of architecture and airbags, and the literal joy of one air pocket for Mary-Kate. After all, if people are going to be talking to your boobs, they might as well have something for people to talk about. Umm, not that everyone was, of course. Ha.

Anyways, so then it was time for dinner at Sawadee which the lovely KateH had arranged for me:

I had Heather and Jessie to my left, although Jessie is mysteriously absent in this badly edited picture:

Then there were the Triple As, who arrived after our entrees but that’s okay. Actually to be perfectly honest, Amy wasn’t even eating with us, but flitted over with her pina colada every so often, because she had a work do too.

Luckily she made it into this picture too, so that I can pretend I have lots more friends. Although of course, since I’m cunningly cropped out of the KateH picture, you have no evidence that I was ever there at all, but here’s the view from around the rest of the table:

I was so fucking stoked that Bopha showed up. Just being near her makes me feel Zen. Of course I was glad to see everyone else too. And to eat tofu. Mmmm tofu. I did a lot of the Bridget Jones introducing people with a common interest thing, but some of my lines totally crashed and burned. Boo-urns.

Both KateH and Jessie had managed to secure a plethora of spare tickets to The Mountain Goats, so we tried to convince the Triple As to come too, but they declined, so the rest of us went back up to my hotel room for some more drinks before the gig. It was so choice just to have some of my favouritist people in the whole wide world piled on my bed.

KateH told a story about how her friend’s grandfather died being looked after by everyone he cared about in the house he was born in and made me cry. Oh the pain of having to retouch my makeup! There was much textage to assorted other people in assorted other places(*), and talk of sex but I can’t remember of what context it was in except that it was very very amusing. Oh yeah, perhaps we were talking about hairy people. Also I told the story of SUPER FUN VAGINA SURGERY for those who hadn’t read it. I suspect that might have been it. Eventually minus Bopha we piled into KateH’s car – which is no longer yellow, and that’s strange (well it’s not so strange, given that it’s a new car, it’s not like her old one metamorphesized, but I haven’t ridden in it before. So there) and headed on up to Shadows.

Apart from a couple of post AUT bar beers in 2003, I don’t think I’ve been to Shadows since the olden days of 1999, so it was strange to be going back there, but amusing to be actually asked for ID and being able to show valid ones, instead of doctored birth certificates and fake ISSIC cards. Also, dya know what’s great about Shadows? JUGS! I’d already dancing a jiggling jug jig for my friends back at the hotel, so I am of course referring to large amounts of beer for a mere $6.20 a pop. Hurray liquor!

Also, let’s have some hurrays for Interweb people coming to introduce themselves, like Chris who was absolutely lovely, and looked like Kayleigh from Firefly and then later Calum who is like, the definition of SHRN. I was very excited to meet them. Also Sam was at the gig and was texting to find us, but he couldn’t, and we could see him calling us, and it was very amusing for a while until I told him where we were. And Amanda was there too (and while I’m all happy with the pics, I wanted to cuddle up to her bosoms like this again, but didn’t, cos I’m sure that would have been inappropriate)

,
and Nigel, and and and oh just so many people I know. Is it any wonder that I was later described as “holding court with the scensters”? No sir. So I didn’t actually see the Mountain Goats at all. I vaguely heard them, but you know how much I hate those motherfuckers who talk at the front of gigs? Of course I sat at the back. And then many hours later, they kicked us out cos we were the last to leave.

For reasons unknown or unremembered (*), Heather and I decided to go to Rakino’s, and so the lovely KateH dropped us off there. Rakino’s was packed full to the brim of hipsters, but we managed to find a spot on the balconey to sit and drink even more beer and try to find our friend via text who turned out to be at a strip club. But there were so many hipsters though. Perhaps it was the official after party? I don’t know, I wasn’t that aware of much at the time.

In fact, it took Heather reminding me the next day for me to remember that after Rakino’s we went and had a couple of cocktails in Deschlers. Ahhh Deschlers. The cocktails were still really excellent, and because it was who knows when in the morning, we got a booth and lovely service, and no one was watching the rugby, unlike the last time I was there which was just so wrong wrong wrong. I hate to think of how many cocktails I have had there – or more specifically, what else I could have done with the money. Oh the memories. I didn’t put my hand on her leg under the table though, because I am not that type of girl any more. And then we shared a taxi to drop me off in Ponsonby and her back at her house. It was an awesome awesome night(*).

I woke up on Saturday to a cacophany of noise, and I wondered who the hell was in my room, and then I wondered where the hell I was, and what the hell I was wearing. Sometimes it’s terribly difficult being me. Once I figured out the answers (1. The window was open and overlooking the cafe in the courtyard 2. I was in a hotel room in Auckland and 3. Pajamas. I must have fallen asleep before I had a chance to take them off) I felt a lot better. So much so that I got up and took a shower and texted Heather to see if she wanted to get brunch. She was still in bed so I went back to sleep and woke up feeling much much crappier. I wandered up and down Ponsonby Road for ages, clutching the Thai doggybag in my hand looking for a cab because thinking was hard, and the sun was shining, and oh my, my stomach had felt happier on other days. But eventually I managed to snag one, and smile and nod my way over to Heather’s, and collapse on her floor. She was in much of a similar condition.

I begged and I begged her to come out to a cafe with me, but they were so very far away (read: 100 metres or so) that we just couldn’t do it. She kept offering me eggs, because apparently she doesn’t realise that I am like DEATH TO ALL EGGS, but eventually she decided to go and buy some bacon and some coke and some potato chips. I puked and checked my email while waiting forher to come back. The lovely girl went and got coffee too! And orange juice. And ready salted chips AND salt and vinegar delisimo chips. Have you tried delisimo chips yet? They are very much the shit even if most of their flavours (like tzaiki) just end up tasting like sour cream & chives. It was the best breakfast ever. So we sat around listening to music, watching tv, chatting to people on the interweb and just generally chilling (*).

Eventually it got to be around 6ish, so I texted Shirley and she very kindly came and picked me up and I took her to dinner. We were going to go to Roasted, but couldn’t find a park so we ended up at Occam. The waiter was snooty, and they had Celine Dion turned up at levels that must surely have been intended to piss off the kitchen staff, so I yelled out my order. The hint wasn’t taken though. I thought about asking them to turn it down but decided just to bitch instead. My eye fillet was goooooooood though. Then it was to the supermarket for chocolate, and wine and a birthday present for Justin – I found him a magic eight ball. Excellent. I napped for half an hour back at my hotel room, and then walked to Shirley’s, via a little knee wobbling as I walked past a place where many years ago, I had received a most unexpected but very very wanted pash. Oh *IV! Oh the get the fuck over it!

Anyways, Shirley lives in a very cool big old villa near Ponsonby Road, and her flatmates have filled it with ex pantomime sets, including a light-up Sky Tower. Her bathroom is bigger than many people’s bedrooms. It’s pretty rad. So we had a drink – or at least I did, she had a half glass, and headed out to find Justin’s party. It was very much like First Year Uni, with Shirley driving, and me drunk in the front seat hanging on for dear life. Except that I wasn’t at all drunk cos of the hangover, but you know, close enough.

For Justin’s 30th, he and his friend decided to throw themselves a Howick themed party, since that was where they grew up (ha ha!). Luckily, they had it in Mt Albert instead of Howick. However, they did still come in costume:

Hot Toddy had found the outfits in lost & found for them since he teaches there now. Justin had put signs up around his house denoting various notorious Howick places, like Musik Point which I’d already seen when Brad took me and KateB and Clayton on a pash tour (and I’d just like to throw out a great big FUCK YEAH! to Google Desktop which found that phrase ‘pash tour’ as quickly as I could type it in. I will be doing this a lot more, I think. The linking to old entries, not the Pash Touring. Although I’d like to do that too please). Shirley and I sat down in a corner because we knew very few people (As I said to her, “Oh, none of the multitude of Justin’s friends that I have brought to orgasm are here”) and Hot Toddy told us facts about wherever it was, which was that George Bernard Shaw had stayed there. When I told Justin that, he was very impressed. But yes, there were lots of people there, and I recognised some of them like Hott Jason (hi, are you still reading my journal four and a bit years later?) and a girl who’d been on the PR Grad Dip with me (who had told me many things about another one of Justin’s friends from the second to last set of parenthesisisiisis), but I was soberish and just feeling really meh. It was strange thinking about how five years ago Justin had his 25th at Garland, and just how different then was to now. Plus, I wanted to go see Ryan McPhun and the Ruby Suns, so around 11pmish we left to go pick up Heather.

At the King’s Arms I was greeted with a “Hey Wellington!” by Matthew Crawley, who seems to always be everywhere (it was he who did a raid on Garland resulting in smoke bombs and Tom Jones posters in the toilet, although I was too busy sex0ring the skankiest guy in teh world at the time to realise. Actually, looking back, that’s a lie. It actually happened at Justin’s 25th, so I was busy doing something that is not ever refered to). Gareth was also there, strangely enough, given that he was playing. We went outside for Heather to have a cigarette, and then when we went back inside, Calum came up and talked to us.

This is where I go a bit squee and wax lyrical about the adoreableness of Calum. I’m not alone in doing it, Heather and Shirley too are members of his fan club. And now you’re about to be:

And one taken on an angle because apparently that’s what hipsters do:

That’s what I love about these (metaphorical) high school boys – I get older, they stay the same age….Ha ha ha, we are dirty old women.

The Ruby Suns were also very very awesome, and I enjoyed them immensely. If you’re not familiar with them, I will say that they’re from Lil Chief Records, which is also home to The Brunettes, so they’re vaguely similar, in the cute Americanisms xylophone instrument swapping kinda way. Yeah. How long has the I need to hurry up and get one of my own before every damn hipster in town has one installed. Also, since I had my handbag with me, and therefore a pen, I grafittied two stalls in the women’s toilets. First person to email me and tell me what I wrote gets a prize. But all good things come to an end, and when everyone else left to go to Die! Die! Die!, Shirley took me and Heather home via junk food. Hurrah.

The next day I checked out at 12pm, and had breakfast, and went to Kyla’s and held Felicity and cried. Then I walked to Shirley’s and hung out and then took a shuttle to the airport and then they stuck me in a business class seat and I listened to Bon Jovi on my iPod because of Star Man and I pretended I was a rock star and that was my holiday and yay I am done now.

So now that I have finished writing about Fiji, finally, I can write about my health. Because you care. Because if you weren’t reading this site, you’d be reading something else, and that something else would probably not be talking about vaginas, and who doesn’t like to read about vaginas? Exactly.

But before I begin, I’d like to give a huge big shout out to Mr. Peter Mahoney for the voicemail he left me on my birthday. I miss you, sir. Say hi to Kate for me. Kate who? Kate Morrison? Is she even still alive?

Now, I mentioned a couple of times that I had some infected mosquito bites, and obviously you got to read about how my party was canceled, etc, but here’s the long story. I got bitten by a lot of mosquitos in Fiji, mostly whilst walking through a paddock at night because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Because I do not sleep in mittens, I scratched them. Everyone scratches their mosquito bites, right? It’s what humans do. And then mosquito bites heal. Except that these ones didn’t. They got puffy, and red around them. The chemist said that I should go to a doctor, but I had to work, so I took some disinfectant cream instead, and applied it regularly and tried to keep the bites clean and not pick at them. The red around them got bigger and bigger. And I didn’t go to the doctor, because I was working, and because I don’t have a doctor down here, and because I didn’t want to go on antibiotics and get thrush. All the mosquito bites got bigger and more and more achey. But I’m a dumbass, so I didn’t go to the doctor.

But then on my birthday I had the fabulous present of realising that the lump that I’ve had on my labia for years had become swollen with pus overnight and sore. I had a good look at it (and I don’t have a hand mirror, so instead of being like a ’70s housewife doing her first self exam after reading a feminist pamphlet, I was all pornstar-like straddling a full length mirror). If that wasn’t a sight enough to behold, it turned out that my labia was about four times the size that it normally is. Pus does not belong there! Of course I had a squeeze but OUCH! It didn’t pop. I went to sleep (somehow) fantasizing about someone sinking a large needle into me and pulling out the fluid. That’s not a cool thing to fantasize about. Do you get how painful and uncomfortable it was? When I woke up in the morning it was even more so, and that’s when I knew I had to call a doctor. The local place was closed, so I cried and asked my sister to take me to the After Hours clinic in Newtown. Let me put the pain in perspective for you gentlemen – imagine that you grew a lump on your penis the size of one of your testicles, and you could feel all the pressure that growth was putting on your skin, and every time you walked, or changed position while sitting it increased the pressure. Couple that with the fact that by this stage half of my left calf was bright red and I was in a pretty bad state, and I was totally freaked out that the infection in my legs was the reason for the big pus-y (pusy? How do I avoid saying “pussy”?) lump.

Of course, I had to wait for an hour at the clinic, in a horrible waiting room full of screaming children, on an uncomfortable chair that I shifted gingerly on. I sent Anji to go do the supermarket shopping for our party, which was supposed to be that night so that she wouldn’t have to wait there too. We got to the clinic at about 11am, and I got called up by a nurse around 12pm. She took one look at my leg and said that I needed to get on antibiotics as soon as possible, took my urine and my temperature (38.1), blood sugar (apparently infected things are a diabetes issue – but I still don’t have diabetes. I’m not sure how come. You’d think I would), and sent me through to the doctor’s exam room for a little more privacy for the doctor to look at my lump. The doctor said I’d be really lucky if I could escape going to hospital to be put on an IV drip for antibiotics, but they’d try giving me some via IV to see if that would help. Then I climbed up on the bed (ouch!) for her to have a look (ouch ouch ouch!). She said it was a balkan (that’s not the word, but it was something similiar. I wa?) cyst – that there are glands there for lubrication, and sometimes they become blocked – much like how pimples are formed. Great, except that pimples aren’t THAT BIG. She also said she’d call the on-duty gyno at A&E to get them to see me as soon as I’d had some antibiotics and had my sores dressed.

First, the nurse took a big marker pen and drew all over my leg, marking where the redness had spread to. Then it was antibiotics time. The thing about getting sick is that your veins run away and hide. It took three pokes with a needle to get the “butterfly” in (butterfly? huh? Your medical speak confuzzles me. Although I suppose part of it did look a little like a butterfly), and then the nurse had to flush my vein with saline, but couldn’t, so she had to move it to another vein. There she could flush it okay, but when she got to the injecting me with antibiotics stage, it HUUUUUUUUUURT so bad that she said that it obviously wasn’t in, so she tried again without any success and had to get the doctor to come and redo it for her. Third time’s a charm. It took half an hour or so for her to sloooooooooooooowly shoot me full of antibiotics. Then I had to lie down on my stomach, bare legs and feet slowly freezing, while she cleaned up my wounds. This wasn’t a simple washing proceedure, oh no. It involved a scalpel blade, cutting off bits of scab and digging out pieces of fluff, a lot of twitching on my behalf, and a lot of apologies from her. Have I mentioned that I was crying all the way through this? Well I was. My labia hurt like mad, the injections and the butterfly left in my arm hurt, having my sores cut open hurt, I was cold, I felt lonely because I’d sent Anji home, I was sick, I was miserable and I was just feeling really sorry for myself, and then I was crying because I was so ashamed that I was acting like a big baby and crying. Fuck I’m a dork. The whole process took a couple of hours. I took a cab to A&E because there was no way in hell I could have walked there at that stage, and gave the letter from the doctor to the lady at the counter, who said that I’d have to see a registrar first, and that there was a two hour waiting period. It was 4pm at that stage and I hadn’t eaten anything since the night before, and I was just so tired, and so sore and so I cried some more while I read the paper and waited. Luckily the lady on the desk turned out to be a truly lovely woman, and she called the gyno registrar who came down to get me, and we walked a long long long way through the hospital up to the gynocology ward because there were no rooms free in A&E. The gyno was South African, as was her supervisor, and together they proded and squeezed me and ignored me as I cried out in pain, said it wasn’t a balkan cyst and declared that I needed to have surgery. They said that if they were in South Africa, they’d just lance the lump under a local anesthetic, but in New Zealand it had to be under general. I was like holy crap! They asked me when I’d last eaten, and I told them, but because I’d had a half a cup of water an hour earlier I wasn’t going to be given the surgery that day. Instead they sent in a Scottish nurse to do more obs on me, who gave me a hug cos I was crying (again) and wrote me a script for some painkillers – thank god. And then Mum showed up, thinking she would just be visiting, but it was time to take me home, after they told me not to eat anything after midnight, and to come back at 7.30am for surgery. Surgery! Holy crap!

So I cried and cried and cried on Mum’s shoulder, and she took me home and stayed around while I had a shower cos Anji went out to pick up dinner. I’d sent out texts (i have never typed the word “vagina” so often!) whilst having my wounds cleaned telling people the party was off, but Dave and Karen came around to hang out, and then Joel showed up with a crate cos he hadn’t seen the notice on my site that Heather had put up for me. They got drunk and rowdy and laughing at me while I sat in my pjs trying not to move, getting slightly dopey on painkillers and feeling sorry for myself. I went to bed before midnight, but they were still banging about at 3am. Best birthday party EVER!

So somehow in the cold dark very very thirsty painful morning I managed to get myself up and Mum picked me up at 7.15am. I didn’t take any more painkillers cos I didn’t know if I was allowed them or not. I got a bed in a ward with one other woman in it, and the nurse told me to change into the hospital gown by 8am when she’d come and do obs on me. Well, she didn’t do them until about 11am. I managed to sleep some, with my lovely mother sitting by my side reading magazines. Then a security guard came to wheel my bed away. I was a little suprised – I guess I thought that the doctor would come and talk to me in the ward. But perhaps I watch too much TV. The anesthetist came to talk to me, and he was a horrible little man, talking about how I was a risk because I was so big (which is something no one else had bothered to mention) and how someone of his size was much safer – but he had to pump my bed down so he could look me in the eye, so you know what buddy? You’re not normal either. One of the nurses was lovely though, and was really nice about taking my obs and just seemed calming in general. Then I met the surgeon – he was young, and kind of cute, and his first name was Nick, so hi everybody! I said that it seemed kind of full on having to get general anesthetic and all, and he said that we were more humane than the South Africans. But then I was wheeled into the operating room, and that was just extreme – knowing that there were at least six people standing around who were going to be dedicated to my vagina for the next 20 minutes or so. Freaky.

The operating table that I clambered on to was much smaller than the bed, and they had me half sitting up on a large stack of pillows. Then they attached arm rests out the sides of the bed and had me pinned down – inserting a drip on one side, and a blood pressure thing on the other, and then they pushed an oxygen mask down on my face, and I started freaking out, because it was like they were trying to smother me (which is dumb, of course – it’s like they were trying to starve me to death with chocolate cake), and I was whimpering so the nice nurse stroked my arm and I had Tyler Durdan saying over and over in my head “oxygen makes you high” and they told me to keep my eyes open even though they were gradually putting me to sleep through the drip, and then I opened my eyes and it was later and I was in the recovery room. I still had the damn oxygen mask on, and I tried to take it off, but the nurse told me to leave it on for a bit more. By then I hadn’t had water for over twelve hours, and I had a sore throat anyway, so I could hardly breathe because of that, so I asked for water and she gave it to me, but then kept freaking me out by telling me to take deep breaths because my oxygen stats were still too low. She put those nasal oxgen things on me instead, and that was better, although it was still hard to breathe deeply. I asked if I had to stay awake and she said no, but I was still aware of them rolling me back through miles of hospital to the ward, where Mum still was. I said I was going to sleep for a while so she left. I still had a pump thing in my hand, and a pad to soak up the blood and pus, and to make things extra jolly I started my period. But I slept amazingly well. They wouldn’t let me leave until I ate something, so I had the bread and fruit that went with my long-ago-gone-cold lunch, and Dr Nick came in and asked if “my friend” was going to take me away, the big cheese – Mum quite obviously looks like a mum. But he is forgiven because he wrote me a script for codeine because halabuton or whatever else I’d been given the night before is like a dollar a pill. He said codeine was an old fashioned drug, just like him, and asked me if I was old fashioned too. Well, when it comes to codeine, I sure am. Now I can bribe more people to wear bear suits for me! When I have my party! Which I will! And I will be drunk at it! And not in pain! Hurray!

On the clinic’s doctor’s orders, I had a week off work, during which time I took my antibiotics like a good girl mostly (it’s hard cos there’s two types, and one I am supposed to take two hours after eating and an hour before eating, and hello, I graze) and mostly avoided alcohol, and didn’t go out and all that, and had a follow up appointment with the doctor on my street who has a horrible receptionist gatekeeper, and a nurse who put bits of gauze on my legs with one piece of tape and thought that was a good enough dressing. And in exchange for that goodness? I now have the flu, and thrush. Hurray!

But I’m going to Rarotonga in two sleeps. So I guess it’s not all bad….

So, you wanna hear about Fiji huh? Well, I guess I don’t blame you. There’s a lot to tell, but if I write it chronologically, it might not work. So maybe I’ll put it under themeatic sections and alphabetise them.

ACCOMODATION
We stayed at a place called Club Fiji, which was nearish Nadi Airport, but had the added distinction of actually being on a beach. Sure, Nadi Bay was really shallow, and when the tide was out the sea was miles and miles and miles away, but it wasn’t too bad to look at. The pool was salt water, which was nice, and there were sun loungers all around, and lots of pretty thatched permanent umbrellas everywhere to sit under, and palm trees and flowers and it was just lovely. Our bure was the futherest away from everything, which meant big long walks to and from the bar & pool, but that’s okay. It was a really nice bure too – wood floors and wood lourves, a big high ceiling, a mosquito net over the double bed which lovely Kate let me have, and a little frige that we filled to the brim. The bathroom was quite spacious too. One night there was a three inch spider in it, so I screamed, but Katie bravely put it outside. I was quite suprised at her coolness in the battle.

The man in the other half of our bure wasn’t quite so cool, however. Oh no. In fact, he told us to turn off our music at 5pm because he was trying to nap (wanker!) and then came and yelled at us when we came back from dinner at 11.30pm (slightly more justified – he should have knocked on the door and been more polite, however). We hypothesized like mad about him, since he appeared to be by himself, before deciding that he had been jilted at the altar and had decided to come on his honeymoon by himself. The fact that a security guard told us that he’d complained another night about the fact that we were LAUGHING, (because how dare we enjoy ourselves on holiday?) seemed to solidify this theory. When we had to get up at 7am to go on a day cruise, I walked ahead of Kate, and he came out and hurled buckets and buckets of abuse at her, saying that we sounded like a pack of drunken hippos, and that she was a fat piece of shit (I don’t know if you’ve seen Kate, but suffice to say that she really isn’t) and that he recommended that she didn’t eat for a year. After that we told the reception staff that we wanted to change rooms, but we didn’t get around to it. We just stalked the guy at the restaurant instead, making loud remarks about how hippos come in herds, not packs. If he’d said something to me instead of Kate, i was going to play Good Cop, and invite him in for a drink and a hug, but he didn’t.

AIRPORTS
I hate airports. Especially if they’re not airconditioned. Or your parents (apparently) think you’re coming back the next day and no one is answering their phone and you are outside in the freezing Wellington wind and you don’t have any house keys and you’re supposed to be at Jessie’s party soon and it’s so cold and your flight was so delayed and you’d already waited for hours the night before at Auckland Airport for a bus and oh I just hate you airports. I’m always crying at you.

BOATS
I was thinking last night that before I went to Fiji I hadn’t been on a boat since January 2nd, 1998 (post The Gathering), but that’s not true cos I went on a ferry between Russell and Paihia, and also on the Hokianga ferry, but we took a lot of boats in Fiji. We went on a Sunset Cruise which we thought would be a big boat, but it was just a rowboat with an outboard motor that we had to cross the sandflats to get to, carrying glasses of wine, and then the guy asked us if he could go faster, and it was great but all the wine flew out of our glasses. Then there was a catamaran out to South Seas Island, and a little boat to get to the island & the submariney boat, and a smaller boat to get to Malamala and their little boat and that’s about it. Well, it certainly felt nautical to me. This is a boring thread.

BOYS
It seems that there is some appreciation for the curves in Fiji – or perhaps because of the heat I was wearing lower cut tops than usual and it would have been the same in NZ. But I’m not sure. One night Kate and I were sitting out on the porch of our bure having a drink, talking shit about the next door neighbour and just generally enjoying ourselves. Kate went inside to pee, or get more drinks, or cheese, or something, when along came the security guard. No, he wasn’t there to tell us to shut up, he just wanted to hang out. Okay. So we made chit chat, and blah blah blah, and Kate came back out again, and we talked some more and then he was boring us and we wanted him to leave but by that stage he was already sitting on the steps of our bure smoking. Since Kate and I had already discussed whether or not we were going to go to mysterious Hell bar that only appeared at night and blasted out bangra til all hours, we asked him if there were any good places we should go to if we were going to go out in Nadi. He was like “you want to go to nightclubs? I know some good places. I’ll take you out tomorrow because I finish my shift at 10pm, so you can get some dinner and I will meet you here”. We were like “oh okay, that sounds okay” before he was all “but you can’t let my bosses know, we’ll have to go secretly, blah blah blah” and “my friend is a taxi driver, I’ll get him to take us” and it just seemed a little more dodgy. And he was staring in the bad way, not the good way. After he finally left, we decided we’d wait and see if we were still keen to go out the next night. After an early morning and a long day on South Seas Island, we decided that no, we weren’t particularly keen to go out, and so we debated all the ways that we could get out of going out – like pretending to be sick, or hiding, or going out by ourselves. He was waiting in the dark for us to walk past though, so we just said we were too tired and he said maybe another night, he’d get his friend to take us out and join us when we finished at 1am. Well, we certainly weren’t very keen to be passed around like that, so in order to get out of it, on another night, we got a guy from the bar to walk us back to our room….

Our waiter at dinner the first night very coconspiritoratorly asked us if we smoked, and I thought he was after a lighter, but then apparently he said somethign about Bob Marley, and I was like “ooooh. No.” but he kept asking, like he wanted to sell us weed, and then he kept touching me, always patting me or stroking me from then onwards and it seemed like he’d go for wherever my sunburn dejour was. I don’t like being touched so much, dammit!

One night we were sitting at the bar having a drink when three local boys asked us to play pool with them. Being obliging young ladies, we said yes, and so we ended up playing two games against them. One of them decided that the best way to pick me up was to talk about how fat I was, first touching my upper arms and saying “powerful muscles!” and then when they asked us if we smoked (dude, what the fuck is it with everyone trying to sell us pot?) and I said no, he was like “oh, I thought you were so fat because you smoked so much”. I was like “I think you’re the rudest boy I’ve ever met. I didn’t say anything about how bad your skin was, you know, where are your manners?” He didn’t get it. Turns out they didn’t get a lot of things. When they kept trying to force their beer on us, telling us how great Fiji Draught was, we asked if they worked for the brewery, or if they were doing viral marketing. They didn’t get it. The guy that was trying to pick Kate up apparentlyl taught web programming, so she told him that I edited websites. He asked me what I did, so I said that I wrote the content for the site. He didn’t understand what content was, and asked me if I wrote in php. It’s nice to know that programmers universally don’t realise that websites actually have to have content! The other guy that was trying for me, who kept touching me got really nasty and competitive when he thought he was losing, while the guy with the bad skin got really bitter that I was playing with his friend. We had to call it a night right about then. They were just toooooo pushy.

Another night at the bar we were talking to everyone there, including Marilyn from Blehiem who we’d got to know on South Seas Island (her and her husband had been coming to Club Fiji for twelve years, twice a year – they took one holiday together and one holiday apart each), and a couple of expats. One of them said he was developing a new resort, and he said he could get us tickets to go out there. Well, yeah, we’re oppotunistic, so we did talk to him for a long time. We got to talking about the upcoming election, and he said he wasn’t voting, so I (of course) went off on a speil about how you’ve got to believe in something and stand up for it (but only if it’s something that I believe in, of course!) and we got on to the civil unions bill – which he thought was wrong. Homos are unnatural. But lesbians are okay – are you guys lesbians? He asked about three times. I told him the say thing every time, that I wasn’t gay with Kate, but yes, sometimes I like women. And then we went into a loooooooooooong speil about how it was perfectly natural. His arguement of course came down to “anal sex with men is gross”. I felt a little bad saying in front of the bartender “so when you’re with a woman, all you ever do is put your penis in her vagina and that’s your whole relationship there?” I think he was too drunk at that stage to get it. He started going on about the bible, so Kate asked him to quote specific passages that spoke out against homosexuality, and I was waiting for him to say Levidicus, but oh no, he didn’t even know that, so we told him that there wasn’t a single mention of it in the bible but boy that was a nice shirt he was wearing of mixed thread. Then Kate said “I’m a scientist…” (which anyone who’s ever heard the story of how outrageously angry she got when we were playing headbands and she was Einstein and when she found out she yelled “BUT YOU SAID I WASN’T AUSTRALIAN!” and we were like …………… until Simon said “are you thinking of Young Einstein?” should know means that she is full of crap, but I was too drunk to hear her say that bit) and launched into a story about how in Africa, there’s been studies done that show there are gay lions who are totally welcomed, because they don’t represent a threat to the leader’s authority, but they help to protect the female lions. Hey, it seemed plausabile at the time, the guy totally believed her – probably partly because he was still hoping we were lesbians together with him. In retrospect, if Kate ever tells that story about the lions again, I told her she should said it’s been written about in a book called Gay Pride. I am hilarious. Anyways, eventually the bar closed, and we realised that the creepy security guard – who had periodically been asking Kate where I was would be lurking around our room wanting to go out with us. We asked the guy to walk us back to our room, and his eyes went !!!!!!!!, so when we got back to our room I said “you do realise we’re not going to have sex with you, right?” and he said “do you have anything to drink?” and then peed in the bushes while Kate went back to reception to get them to unlock our room cos we’d lost our key (inside, we’d left our room open but housekeeping must have locked it). Charmer. Eventually I got bored, and he hadn’t given us tickets, so I went to bed. He asked Kate to go for a moonlight walk on the beach, but strangely she declined, so he finally left. I hope that our gay lions have changed his outlook on life.

COMEDY DUO

Apparently Kate’s dad has suggested that her and I together are a comedy duo. Once she told me that, it was a phrase that I heard many times in my head, when Kate’s suitcase weighed 30kg at check-in, or when we lost our room key, or when we couldn’t get out of the water on Malamala Island because of the undertown and slippery sand, or when we got caught up in hammocks etc…. Possibly the biggest mistake this comedy duo made was to try to walk through the field between our resort and the next. It was dark, deep and full of infectious mosquitos, ditches and streams. No snakes though.

FLIGHTS
The flight to Fiji was much more spacious than I thought it would be. I loved the tan fake leather seats. We asked if we could be upgraded, and they checked, but apparently it was full. The continental breakfast was quite good. I didn’t have champagne. The movie was Lemony Snickett so I didn’t watch it. The flight back was much more squishy. I drank some wine. The movie had Vin Diseal and kids in it. What was Lorelei thinking?

FOOD
I ate a lot of rib eye. The food was mostly decidedly average, but the steak was good.

INJURIES

My many mosquito bites that I scratched have now turned white and black, with raised red areas around them. They feel warmer than the rest of my legs. The pharmacist suggested I should go to a doctor. I think my legs are going to fall off with gangrene.

Have you ever had to put peroxide on a whole heap of nasty coral scratches? MOTHERFUCKING STING OUCH. I used vodka on them (and in me) for the next couple of days after that.

Nasty heat rash type thing across Mary-Kate & Ashley. Sure, hit me in my
one pretty spot, you bastard.

(25 June: I’m still on antibiotics that they had to put into me via drip at first because the mossie bites were so infected. Nice one Jo, way to get to the doctor in time).

ISLANDS
South Seas Island has a tiny little backpackers’ on it, but we were just there for the day. It’s very pretty, but the beach is very sharp. Luckily, they have a pool! And they take you out into deep water for snorkelling. I heart South Seas Island, only 25 minutes from (horrible) Denerau.

Malamala Island was suggested to us by the tour desk, who said that the beach wasn’t rocky at all. She lied. I hate Malamala Island. It’s pretty, but the beach is ridiculously sharp, and there’s no pool to cool off in, and the reef is too shallow, and the snorkelling is freaky, and there aren’t any sun loungers to sit on, only tables with benches.

LIQUOR
Kini had told me that Fiji has the cheapest liquor prices at Duty Free, and the travel agent had recommended to us that we take a couple of bottles over if we wanted to have pre dinner drinks and the like. Fijian Duty Free shops were horrible though, with really really pushy sales attendents. I like to be able to at least set foot in a place before people are trying to get me to buy things. Nevermind. We got a bottle of vanilla vodka and a couple of bottles of overpriced bad white wine (White Label Corbans was everywhere) on the way in, so that we could have pre dinner drinks in our bure. At the bar our drink of choice was generally frozen (and sometimes not yet frozen) margaritas from a slushie machine that cost F$5.50 a piece. Banana coladas were also good. Our trip to South Seas Island included all drinks – but that was cask wine (which they sold for $66 a cask, mind you). On Mala Mala the wine was in 2 litre bottles – which they served in plastic cups with ice cubes in. We took photos of it in all its icey glory. Fijian Draught beer which the horrible boys we played pool with kept trying to force on us (we asked them if they were in viral marketing for the brewery. They said huh?) tasted really bland, as did both Fiji Gold and Fiji Bitter, even though they were free! Despite all the liquor flowing we only got really drunk one night.

READING MATERIAL
I read four books and Metro and Q and the Sunday Herald cover-to-cover. Late one night when it was too hot to sleep, I was sitting up reading Heavier Than Heaven, even though it seemed strange to be reading about cold rainy Aberdeen and heroin when I was in the sun with a cocktail in my hand most of the time, and it was getting to be the start of 1994 (in the book, not in a time machine, dumbass) and I got to feeling the same way that i did when I first watched Romeo + Juliet ie: “fuck I hope Hollywood has put a happy ending in here, fuck artistic credibility”. Of course, they didn’t, and so Kurt still shot himself in the head and I cried.

I’m glad that Kate didn’t read Fin because it was all about a fear of sharks (and it was fucking great). Exhibitionism was short stories that made me think of the zine that I really really wanna have finished by next Friday. Hmm, perhaps I should get on to that. And I can’t even remember the name of the yellow book, except that it was about someone called Melody who was trying to put on some kind of hippie festival but she was a great big fuckup. It was very entertaining anyway.

RELAXING
I feel bad because I am complaining about quite a few things, but really, that’s because it makes a better story than just saying “we sat in the sun, read books, swam lots and chilled out”.

It would have been more relaxing if people had left me the hell alone though.

SNORKELLING

At South Seas Island, they take you by boat out into the deep water, and it’s AMAZING! Sooooooo many schools of fishies that you can swim amongst, and parrot fish everywhere, and gorgeous coral and yayness, and they let you do your own thing, and it’s just great.

At Malamala, they take you within the reef for the snorkelling, so it’s so shallow you can stand everywhere – if you can find a patch without coral, that is, and so you’re about a foot over very very sharp things when you’re swimming, and if you’re fat, it’s much less than that, and there aren’t very many fishes, and if you picked up a dud snorkel without a blow valve, and you can’t clear it, and you’re afraid of getting cut, and you have a panic attack, and you signal the boat to come get you, well it’s damn slippery getting in, and you’re going to cut yourself up really badly and sit in the boat freaking out and crying for a long time while strangers look quizically at you.

SEEDY UNDERBELLY
Resort staff are weird.

Drinks at Karen’s with Brad and Shirley, and then we’re off to Atomic at Indigo via the 90s party at Blink’s but when we got there it was all about the sign on the door saying it was canceled, so we stopped to hide booze by the Bakehouse. Brad apparently went back to get another beer later, all class. Once the band had finished (Electrocrack is the new Emperor’s New Clothes), the music was great.

If New Zealand had Craigslist I would post something saying “Dear girl with the NIN tattoos and the dice necklace – you grabbed my pearls and told me you loved them and then when I suggested you punch your friend you told me you loved me and then when it seemed like you almost took my hand in the bathroom, and then did take it later but only to ask for cigarettes, well, I don’t know if you’re that way inclined, or if you are if you’d be that way inclined towards me or not, but I’d just really like to hold hands and kiss you”. Girlcrushes are confusing. Girlie-Giggling Crushes, on the other hand, are fun, even if your friends do tell you to stop giggling just cos you’ve seen the boy you have a crush on, and yell at you to talk to him even though you know he’s not interested, but hey, a hug’s good enough. And then when Heather calls you at 11am, you’re like “arrgh, I love you Heather but I’ve got to go back to sleep to dream about the boy and skipping through fields of daisies”.

Which is actually a lie, because while we’re jumbling this narrative around, I actually dreamt about Kristen, who was working behind the bar and who was (fair enoughly too) very tired. I dreamt I got up at school and yelled at everyone that she was singlehandedly the best person at the school and reeled off a list of her achievements and then cried. Much more wholesome than the other day when I dreamt I decided out of the blue to hire a male prostitute, who was gay but was doing straight for the money. I don’t know why I bothered though, because he blamed me for his inability to stick it in (probably not helped by the fact that I was inexplicitly still wearing my panties – hehe I said panties) but eventually he came across my face and mouth and left. And I paid $130 for that? Wow, even in my dreams I get ripped off.

And on that note before I return to my night story, I might throw down my New Year’s Resolutions:

Stop spending so much money on other people who don’t reciprocate

Stop losing friends

Stop being such a pooper and accept every invitation I’m given – within reason. Rain is not a reason.
The first one? Well, chances are, if you’re in Wellington, I have bought you a drink. In fact, I’ve probably brought you a couple, and statistically speaking, you haven’t bought me shit. I am tired of being overly generous when I am around people who are stingy. I’m not making ridiculously more amounts of money than y’all – I only know one student and I know when he’s on Shorters I’ll be living large off him. Yeah.

So yeah, the rest of the night? Dance dance dance dance. I tried to kiss all my friends on the lips at midnight because hey, it’s 2005 and 2005 is going to be the year of the kiss (and I can decide at the end that by “kiss” I mean “no kiss” if need be), but I don’t think I managed a single one. The one sucky thing about the Non-smoking legislation is that the balcony was absolutely packed whenever I went out to cool down a bit. I saw many people I knew – including one of Katy’s friends who told me he remembered me cos he was shocked to hear the joke I told him come out of my mouth (this is the guy who told me he was waiting for my top to have a wardrobe malfunction). The joke, for the record is Two guys were sitting at a bar and one said to the other “I could have sex with any woman here”. “Oh yeah,” says the other guy, “why’s that?” to which the first guy answers “because I’m a rapist”. Brad had a cute friend who I thought looked really familiar and then I was embarrassed because I realised I thought he looked like the asshole on ‘My Restaurant Rules’ which I have been watching this week. The cute guy had an annoying workmate who grabbed my pearls like half a dozen other people and was really sleazy and tried to make a joke about pearl necklaces. Jessie was there too for a while and I hope she had as much fun as I did. KateH showed up later, fresh from a wedding at Parliment, and there was a boy with her who looked like a sheep farmer. Given that she had mostly been partying with National Party members, it was quite likely that he was actually a sheep farmer – or at least his parents. Bad England. Nevermind. My old workmate Anthea was there too, and she was very very loud. I had no trouble hearing her. In fact, my ears are still ringing today, but I suspect that’s not her fault.

They played ’99 Luftballoons’ and I realised it’s been ten years since I celebrated New Year’s in Roppongi, Beth and I leaving the house semi-legitmately saying we were going to Meiji Shrine with the other (literal) million people. They played large chunks of Indie. They played so much good music that I got so tired dancing I found i was dancing like a little bitch around her handbag, which annoyed me muchly. Speaking of little bitches, at one stage in the toilet queue there was this slapper in a tiny skirt and fuckme boots and so much makeup she was verging on Goth, and she was applying more and more and more, and she could hardly stand, and one girl was trying to tell her that she was beautiful the way she was (an admirable sentiment), seeing as how the girl was in a BAD MOOD and was looking to start a fight – when I suggested maybe she should sit down she was like “MAYBE YOU NEED TO SIT DOWN” and that’s when the tattooed girl touched my hand, ooh la la, anyways. Slapper and her boyfriend were all over each other later on the dance floor. At one stage there were grossly dirtydancing couples in my line of vision every way I turned, which made me want to claw out my own eyes. Puke puke.

Around 4.30am I could hardly stand up anymore, so I taxied home. None of my flatmates were home, except for J’s friend who I’d had a terrible faux-pas with earlier (she went to my high school but I couldn’t place her at first until I was like “oooh you used to be much skinnier” – because she was anorexic. Nice one Jo. I tried to soften it with a “you seem much more relaxed now”. I don’t know how well that worked.) Anyways, I showered and propped my feet up on a pile of pillows and because i still had red bull running through my veins I watched some Buffy/Angel for ages. Then because my ears were ringing and my feet were ache ache acheing I dug out the last of my codeine and wanted to cry when there was only one pill left cos I thought there were two. Nevertheless, pretty much straight away everything went wispysoft and lovely. The top of my head went all tingly, and the pain shifted down a large amount. I didn’t manage to fall asleep though, just snuggle down into a blissful state which Sebby interupted, miaowing to get in and then not letting me cuddle him as much as I wanted to. Sigh. I think maybe I will develop a prescription drug addiction for 2005. Codeine is so nice. If you can get me some, I will dress up in a bear suit for you.

So tell me about your night then.

I’m now writing this almost two weeks later than events, which is strange cos I didn’t realise that time went by so quickly. Nevermind, let’s plunge into my last couple’o days in the Auck town shall I?

Monday 6th December
I finally managed to have myself a merry little sleep in, tucked away in Oratia, which was certainly very pleasant, even though I felt terrible cos I got a text from Martina going “Okay I’m ready! Meet me on K’Road” and I had to reply going “umm I just woke up, see you in an hour or so?” But eventually I made my way into town and picked her up, and since it was a gorgeous sunny day we drove over to Devonport and had lunch at Manuka. Then, because it was so very nice and because we both found ourselves being the only other people we knew who wanted to do it, we set off to look for a beach. Now, you’ll of course recall that I once spent the summer working for the North Shore City Council and that my job then seemed to consist of little more than driving around all day getting suntanned. However, that was a long time ago, so we went for a rather extended drive up the motorway to Greville Road and then a long way back down East Coast Bays Road (which pretty much doesn’t go past the sea at all!) trying to find a nice little beach, before I took drastic action and found our way to Milford Beach.

There weren’t very many people there, which was great, and there was a changing shed with showers and an open-roofed area like an Italian courtyard which was great, so we got suited up and tried to get away from any boys on the beach. The water was very very cold and it made me hyperventilate a little bit (“sorry Martina, I know I sound like I’m heavy-breathing at you…”) but it warmed up a little, at least enough to frolick and try to do headstands in. When I started trying to do yoga poses and pretty much ended up nearly drowning myself, it was time to call it a day. The showers weren’t warm, but at least they weren’t salty. We headed back to the right side of the bridge to Occam for some more food and a perusal of Civic’s video sale (Cruel Intentions, Far from Heaven and umm something else for $12) before Martina left me for a ride home. I was waiting for Iva to call me so we could meet up, so I found myself a park to sit in and cuddled up with The Dirt. It’s soooo good. I wish I was in Motley Crue, for serious.

It turned out that Iva was trapped on the shore, so we decided to see each other the next day instead, and I eventually made my way towards KateH’s, via a phone call to La to see if he wanted to come along to the party we were going to that night, for a girlie website that I won’t name – which, after I uttered the magic words “free booze” of course he did, so I told him where the party was at and he said he’d meet us there. At Kate’s I believe we probably watched Shortland St together, and got poshed up, me making the last minute decision to switch from my party frock to my cleavage top (and of course SHRN yellow scarf), which I think in hindsight was quite fortuitous, and we set off to pick up her friend Olly, who is British but edits a certain ‘lifestyle’ paper. Haha, that’s me exercising my ‘get out of jail free’ card again. I get to say “but” because we all know that I find British accents ridiculously hot, BUT I try not to waste my time hankering after boys if I know straight away (as opposed to at Ruby on Friday) that they’re gay. Y’dig? Yeah. Anyways. We had to trek around and around and around The Secret Garden looking for La, cos the entrance isn’t actually on the street that it says it’s on, but eventually we kind of gave up and went in, keen to get started on the free liquor. Or at least I was. Given that KateH was driving, I imagine that she was a little more restrained. I got severely fucked off because Horrible Gay Jonny (and let me point out here that the ‘gay’ tag is used because before him I’d had another Horrible Jonny flatmate) was serving drinks and grrrrrrrr he makes me so mad with his theiving and then his fakeness. Bah. I’ve vented about this already. But I am setting the scene for what comes later by giving a partial reason as to why I downed so so so many glasses of bubbly very quickly ie: I was angus and also a little bored until La showed up. KateB was at the party too, but she left pretty early, so mostly I just talked to Olly and KateH (although they knew lots of people) and La, until much later in the night when we were out the back adn the bubbly had run out and I’d switched to beer and was talking to a whole bunch of random guys and a couple of other people I knew. Now, in further stage setting, let me tell you about the toilets at the Secret Garden – they have shower curtains for doors. Yuck! I’d had one piece of cheese that went straight to my bowels and I was like aaaaargh, but then I thought “Well, you know what? These girls here jostling for space to adjust their makeup, I don’t respect them, why should I care about what they think of me?”. Later though the toilets were all floody and still really crowded, so I couldn’t have a quiet puke, which meant that all the beer and bubbly stayed in my stomach. Foreshadowing.

Eventually almost all the people I knew had left – KateH with the oh so subtle “call my cellie when you get to my house – or if you should happen to be staying in (certain address implying that I would be in someone else’s bed), I can come and pick you up from there”. Aww bless her. I imagine I said something like “Well, I’d like to say that’s not going to happen but I’d probably be lying”. Needless to say pretty much as soon as she’d left, perhaps, I found myself making out with a boy, and soon we were in a taxi on our way to his house. Now, I’ve made out in taxis with three other boys before (oh hush, not all at the same time) and the drivers have always been the embodiment of discretion. This driver was an ASSHOLE. Okay, admittedly I can’t remember exactly what it was that he was saying, but I think it was of the nudge nudge wink wink “go on my son” type commentary which was really really unnecessary, and which probably contributed a little to my later unease. Anyways so I found myself in a house that is very familiar to me, and in fact on a bed that I’d been on before, peeing in a bathroom where I’d peed so many times before mid-coitally, and it was just a little bit strange. Before I knew what was what, he had a condom on, and I was like “woahhhhhhh, wait a minute….” I know that I’ve bitched for a year and a half about my total lack of sex, but what with it staring me in the face like that (so to speak, of course), and the feelings that being back in that house stirred up again, I suddenly realised I couldn’t do it, and I told him so. I’ve been without sex for so long I’m a second-time virgin, and I just think it’d be really wrong to do it with someone that I’m not in love with – or failing love then at least Ridiculously Hot wrists-tied-above-my-head, him-whispering-in-my-ear-about-all-the-things-he’s-going-to-do and then how-he’s-going-to-pass-me-onto-all-his-friends-cos-I’m-such-a-fucking-whore Dirty Passion Violent Fucking. Giggly-drunk-friend-scoring isn’t good enough, unfortunately. So instead, I went down on him (well, I would have anyway) but I was in much more of a hurry for him to hurry up and come so that he’d stop begging me to let him fuck me. He still had the condom on at the start, and that was strange, and of course, his dick was hitting the back of my throat, and I was still full of beer and bubbly, so what happened? Oh yeah, I started gagging and my mouth filled with vomit. Now, I thought I’d just swallowed it back (heh) but after he’d finally finished, he was like “umm, I’m going to go sleep in the lounge, cos you threw up on this side of the bed” and I was like “omg, wtf?” and then I got all offended and was like “FINE! If you won’t sleep with me then I guess I’ll go to Kate’s” (cos you know, I totally had the moral highground on my side – hahahaha) and after he’d left, I groped around in the dark (some more, haha man, how many fucking double entendres can one entry have? I guess this is like, a year and a half’s worth poured into one night) trying to find my clothes, since he doesn’t have a lightbulb in his room. I left without a skirt (luckily I was wearing pants underneath) but with pearl necklaces (haha, see previous-to-previous brackets) and hiked up to the main road to get some cash and find a taxi and hope that my cellphone battery didn’t die, which it seemed to be doing. Somehow though I managed to get a taxi, and the driver seemed much nicer when I complained about the previous one, and KateH got up and let me in and all seemed well in the world.

Tuesday 7th

I woke up around 10.30am, feeling pretty damn sorry for myself, let me tell you. Kateh had left a room outside the room that I was sleeping in with her worknumber on it, so I gave her a call cos I knew she was supposed to come home and turn the alarm on when I left. When I told her that yes, I had gone home with the boy, she briefly wondered why I hadn’t just stayed the night there then, but accepted my explanation that it was weird. I don’t know if I mentioned the puke thing or not – I probably tried to conceal it so that she didn’t worry about her flatmate’s bed. Who knows? Anyways, it transpired that she wouldn’t be able to make it home until lunchtime so I had a cold shower (like I should have had the night before, but nevermind) and settled down with my laptop to write the ‘Things Not To Do Whilst Sucking Cock’ entry that only my Hubrettes can read, and to contemplate how much my black and silver skirt meant to me vs the having to go back to the boy’s house and pick it up. Well, when KateH finally got home it was 2.30pm so I realised I couldn’t put it off anymore, so it was off to the boy’s house with me. Him and all his flatmates were all sitting out on the back porch in the sun. I had no idea what he’d told them, but I do know that the walls there are paper thin (and that the girl he shares a wall with is a prudey little virgin, hahahah). I tried to play it all casual, just “hey, how’s it going?”. He was laughing at me when I had to say “so um, did I leave my skirt in your room?” so I double-casualed it by saying “haha, that sounds really bad”. Yeah I’m going to pretend that your flatmates didn’t hear me faking an orgasm if I want to, okay? Sweet. They were like “oh what are you up to today?” which meant I had a trump card up my sleeve – I told them I was going to go see Iva, which was true but also I knew that there was bad blood between them all, so they started going blah blah blah which took the heat off me and I got to leave holding my head up high. Phew!

Next up on my agenda was a visit to Wendy’s and then to the shore to see Iva Beaver. we sat in the sun and talked about Bernard, amongst other things. Ahh sweet sweet dusty cups. Then I went to meet up with OLIVIA and STEVE and KYLA, once I finally found her house, that is (stupid Americans saying “eighteen” instead of “seventeen”, or more likely stupid hungover not-awake&capable of listening me). After cruising Franklin Road to see the lights and marvel at the audacity of the house with a COFFEE CART in front of it, we went to Joy Bong for dinner, where I struggled to question how the tofu was done in a tofu and eggplant dish I was eyeing up (when I’m around vegans I eat vegan). I got a different dish instead cos I was afraid it’d be the squishy kind I don’t like, and as Olivia said of my tofu, it turns out i want it done like it’s a bouncy castle. It was so great to see them again, cos I haven’t seen them since umm forever, but they were tired from the flight, and I was tired from the debauchary and found myself only able to say “the thing with the stuff” and “so hot right now”. Whatever happened to Verbacious Joanna? We fought over the bill and I thought I won and paid it but the next day I found some cash in my bag so either they slipped it in or I am just terrible with money. Then we went back to Kyla’s to watch half of Harry Potter 3 and make dirty jokes about paedophilia. Have some chocolate little boy, and all of that. Of course the night didn’t last nearly long enough, but sigh, I guess I’ll get to see them again in a couple of years or something.

Wednesday 8th
Having stayed at Kateb’s again, I got up in time to do some research on a Certain Band Who Have A Lot of Members adn Wear Robes because I was interviewing their frontman. He was a little grumpy and the line wasn’t that good. Sigh. Then I drove back to Welly and Sebby was overjoyed to see me. The end.