Hubris.co.nz

Saturday, July 20th 2002

In which Joanna tries to right all the wrongs in the world

So, this afternoon, Bops and I went to Newmarket. We were looking for a Sony/Aiwa/Pioneer microsystem under $400 with a cd player, cassette and RCA ports looking good for me, and a computer under $2000 for her. I found a Phillips one which the guy in Bond&Bond woulda dropped to $420 for me, so I figured the guy in Noel Lemming since they’re owned by the same company woulda done for me on an Aiwa woulda done for me for the same price, but it was kinda mintgreen tinged, so I’m not sure if I liked it. But we did find Bops a computer for $1700, and managed to talk the shop guy into being able to put less than a 20% deposit on it. I scrapped up $170 outta my account and she had $60 cash. We felt like we was scrounging for coins under the sofa. T has agreed to set us up a network, so I’mma do my best to not piss him off til he’s done that. Hi T, don’t get shirty with me for writign this. Lately I have been having mad flashbacks about all sorts of things, and I have this image of you in my head of you jumping on my bed and hitting your head on my dusty chandelier. That’s all.

Oh, okay, so where were we? Okay, KateH on the phone at 7.40pm, saying let’s meet soemwhere BYO at 8pm, and so we go through the yellow pages togehter and agree to meet at Sri Panang on K’Road so I don’t have to walk down the hill, but once I’ve finally got my shit together, i finally realise I’m on the wrong side’o the road, and when she calls I dunno where she is, so we decide to meet at Saigon instead. So yeah, super yummy Vietnamese for dinner, and then we go home for Martinis. Emma showed up with some crazyass friends, so that was amusing for a while, especially cos she called me really fucking beautiful and you know I pretty much fall for anyone that calls me beautiful – or maybe that’ sjust everyone I’ve fallen for has also called me beautiful.<!– cos you know I always thought Emma was HOT –> Chicken -> egg -> chicken etc. Katie read my list’o memories from Garland (or from the bathroom, laundry, hallway and kitchen, cos that’s only as far as I’ve ever got with those lists) while I got changed and reapplied makeup. She was impressed that I had “There’s a glass of water out here for you Jo” as a memory, cos that’s what she remembered from the bathroom too. That’s all I wrote down, cos what else can you say about a month of throwing up constantly and stressing out all the people that you care about? Especially since she was just “Justin’s Girlfriend” then (sweetei I love you and I don’t even need to say how much more you are now).

Anyways, where was I before I started talking about things that let’s so not go there right now. Oh yeah, Martinis at home, then we went to a party of her friends’, who are also my friends at tech who apparently actually really like me, so I’m so not a Grand Dick, and that’s yay. They were just down Symonds Street, and their party was on the roof of their building. I spent most of the time talking to the editor of Craccum from 2000, and we had astonishingly similar taste in music, and laughed about teh same things, and he was so cool and I was really surprised that apparently he wasn’t gay. It was choice to see where Kelly and Rowena lived as well. And then, we went to a party at Khuja, which was in the private back room so that was excellent, and I had long indepth conversations with assorted people, mostly to accomodate Katie chatting up boys. The boy I was talking to was talking close and whispering in my ear, and I had to whisper in his since the music was really loud, and I was mocking his partial English accent, and I dunno, I just had a real urge to kiss him behind his ears, and the last boy that I felt that for ended up kissing me, but this boy didn’t cos we left to go do sonmethoing else. What did we do? it’/s hard to remember. Drinks at The Supper Club maybe? And then Oporto, and I rang Justin to see where he was at, and he was like “hey, if you wanna hang out, you should call me before 2.46am” which made me laugh lots cos I ahd no idea what the time was cos Katie had had my cellie in her bag all night.

Then we talked about it, as we had been talking about it all night, and had had a big debate before we went into Oporto, but we went into Starks to have a very loud discussion in front of this FUCKING DICK who has done bad things to someone cool and you so don’t do that on our watch without us having to say something, and yeah, so loud obnoxious indignant conversation til we got the “You ladies would be more comfortable in the Civic Lounge” line, and fuck Katie, when i started this evening, I had $75 in my pocket, and now I have $6 for laundry and like $4 in scrapnel. What DID we get up to? Love you SO much baby xojo.

I guess any day that starts with a woman in rubber gloves painfully inserting things into you can only get better.

So yesterday, after I got home from the doctor’s (I only got a “down below” check as she put it, rather than blood taken for Hep C and HIV, not because I have a fear of needles – in fact, I freakishly kinda like watching my blood being taken – but just because) I went and took a nap, and I actually fell into a really really deep sleep. I put this down to the fact that I’ve been getting an average of 5 hours a night lately, which is not enough to sustain me. I know that it was a deep sleep because i had very very vivid dreams, that started with me inviting Dr. White home for a cup of tea because I thought she was lonely. I won’t go into all the details, but it ended up that there was a rave at my house, and then in the dream I woke up and thought it was all a dream and it went on and on and on. Yeah.

When I woke up for real though, I had such a sore throat, so I complained mightily about it to Clayt when he got home – “Claaaaaaaaay, my throat is sore! Claaaaaaay, my vagina is sooooooore! I’m supposed to go out tonight but I won’t be able to do ANYTHING like this waaaaah”. He sympathized with me as much as possible. Poor Clay; I’m sure he has daydreams about having a flatmate with a lower level of self disclosure. But anyways. Shirley came over from her last day of work, all bubbly and happy, bringing with her Lemsip for my throat and red wine to heal my other aching body bits, and KateH came over as well and we listened to excellent music and chatted. Eventually we rang the King’s Arms to see what order the bands were playing and they laughed at me for telling the bar man that he was a wonderful person when he went and asked for me.

We got in a taxi and went there and met up with KateH’s flatmate Karin (okay, maybe her name is spelt Karen – i’m not sure, but if I call her Karen then you might get confused with my sister, so I’m damn well gonna call her Karin and if you have a problem with that, well that’s just too damn bad). We sat in the garden while Handsome Geoffry were playing, because of course we were really there to see The Heavy Jones Trio. Mmmmmmmmm I’ve got such a rockstar crush. Kelly’s just so completely adorable and he was doing a little sideways kick thing instead of the knee jiggle, and it was just so endearing, like a little puppy. Oh that voice and that soul! I don’t think I have any interest in meeting him because that just wouldn’t be the same. Plus, as I said to Annabel, I’m far cooler on screen than in real life (and this is where my detractors say “but you’re not at all cool onscreen” and where i say back “then why are you reading me?”). Golden Horse afterwards were good too, but by that stage I was too busy laughing at the very camp guy hitting on Shirley.

After the Kings Arms, we taxied to Lovely Paul’s house, where there was supposed to be a party, but we just found them all watching David Blane Magician videos being completly in awe. Justin rang my cellie then, and told me he was at a party around the corner from my house, where I’d been to a party before after my 21st adn they’d told me they were Norwegian porn stars, so Shirley and I got yet another taxi and went over there. The party was actually one house up from the Norwegian Porn Star House, which just meant that I’ve got around more of my street, which is excellent. It took ages to find out who actually lived there, but that was alright, cos when I did meet him, he was very nice and also very cute, and he’s gonna come to our next party. Brilliant. Also in attendence at the party were KateM, and Jason (oh look, adreniline rush!) and JeremE <!– oh my god he has a billion dollar smile when he saw me –>which was cool, so I met lots of new people who were all very nice, even if there was one guy who was off on some tangent about something to do with chickens that I couldn’t follow. For a while I felt a little 15 again, off giggling in a corner with Shirley and KateM cos they hadn’t seen each other in ages. But then I smoked a lot of pot, and it was cool. Shirley left around 1amish, since we were right around the corner from my house so I gave her the key and she went and slept in Clay’s room. I stayed til some time after 4, cos it was all peaceful and mellow, sitting around laughing and listening to PJ Harvey for ages and ages. So that was cool.

I had an excellent excellent sleep which makes me think that i really should smoke pot more often perhaps, and then Shirley woke me some time around 7am to say goodbye. I went back to sleep until KateM rang me for a gossip and catch up. She told me that she’d spent hours that night talking to the boy I fancy, alternating between praising me to the high heavans and warning him not to treat me badly and saying it was all or nothing. Awww, how sweet of her! She apologised cos she said maybe she’d been a little over the top. I know a huge part of it was residual frustration from a couple’o years ago when everyone wanted to yell at a particular person but I asked them all not to cos the repercussions just wouldn’t have been worth it. And so far today all that I’ve done was start to watch “Enemy at the Gates” but it seemed too gruelling, even for Jude Law and what is apparently one of the best onscreen sex scenes. So I’ll go watch “The End of the Affair” now and see if I can find someone to go out to dinner with.

We’re in some girlie strip club somewhere and the dancer looks EXACTLY like some girl I fucked a couple of years ago, only with bigger breasts, and so it’s a little odd for me, and Nikki’s like “txt everyone!” and so I do, and then I stop to pause and wonder how the fuck I got there. And then so I think things through, and it’s KateH’s birthday, and we’re BYOing at Caravan Serai, so there’s a couple of bottles going in me as well as some lamb and hummus or something and I’m talking to lots of Kate’s friends, and wanting to set Jarrod up with WellyBrad, but they’re both refusing to call each other, so oh well. And then I’m with Nikki and Nichola, and we’re in Nikki’s car, and then we’re parking and then we’re paying a cover charge and yeah.

Later Nikki drops me at Khuja, and I’m apologising to KateH for complaining to all her workmates about the music they play, even though I know that they agree with me, and I keep calling Lovely Paul on his cellie and laughing at him trying to figure out who it is. And then eventually I go home, and there’s lamb&rice turkish on the way home, and now there’s exlovers and tears and water being spilt all over the place and oh my god, this is too excruitating.

This is me resisting doing a booty call but I’m so real tempted, and if you’re reading this, you do know you’re fucking excellent in bed, right? Like, that thing you do with your fingers and my clit, OH MY GOD. But from now on, I’ll be PG. Oh, did I mention it’s been one of those nights? I’m sure you’ve realised it anyways.

Where was I? Oh yeah, answering phones for KateM for three and a half hours, playing on an internet that actually works, as opposed to this one at home. Although finally it seems to be working. Anyways, so yeah, day spent at KateM’s work, trying to be all cool and shit, adn then I had coffee with Thomas to say like an official goodbye. Like,you can go “what the fuck?” and all, but yeah, it was important to me. So I did that and stuff. And then I came home and Clay hugged me lots. Ohmy god, did I mention that he knew about my fuckbuddy all along? And there I was thinking i was so sly and discreet. But I’m sure I’m talking about something more important.

Like maybe Inco being parked in Mt. Eden at KateM’s house. Hi Scott! Hi KateM. Damn stalkers. Anyways, their party was lots of fun. I talked to lots of programmers and got all defensive and thought I was boring til they pointed out that they could have quite easily have walked away. Hamish and I had another staged political arguement, this time about the Treaty of Waitangi and I was arguing on the side of the Tangata Whenua, so that was fun. There would have been more dancing only ummm, I can’t remember what my excuse was. Oh yeah, I wanted hip hop only it was all house. I miss Ayna! I wanna be at her house listening to oh baby I like it raw and you can call me dirty and then lift up your skirt. I like the hip and the hop. And I punched Justin lots for something that’s not his fault but which I blame him entirely for. And I talked to Lovely Paul and all and eventually we ended up in taxi going to town, even after I knocked bottles off the porch onto the ground.

And I talked to Jody a lot whichwas ex OOOH NEW PLUTO VIDEO. Okay, so I’m back from that. I did Moscow Snow. Hey EM, I’d love to send you Pluto and other stuff, except of course that you haven’t writeen me in aaaaaaages. Meh. Oh wait, I was going to stop saying “meh”, because the boy used to have an ex with the same name as me who used to say “neh” all the time, but really, it’s not all about the boy. It’s about drinking too, I’m sure. And dancing at the oh my god, what the fuck is it called? The Grand Circle. Yeah. That aws cool. And then walking home all blah blah and saying “hi” too much and i’m sleepy and I gotta boot up wordpad to do my index since notepad won’t take it. Etc etc. Also, programmer Jason – KateM agreed with me that you had hairwhen I first met you. So there.

What’s that Joanna? What’s that grin all about? Ummm… kittens? Yeah, kittens. That works for me.

I catsat KateB’s little Mischa today. She’s SO CUTE. I can fit her in one hand. I took a photo of her too, hmm, where did it go?

There it went. So yeah, we played lots and she attacked my nose some. KateH came over for lunch and to see the Kitten so that was lovely.

Then KateB came around 4ish to pick up Mischa and she was a darling and did my dishes and cleaned my kitchen for me while I tried to tidy the lounge. I was supposed to go out for a drink with Jeremy E. then (that’s someone new, not the Jezza that I used to flat with) but instead we just stayed here and drank coffee and tea and smoked pot. It was nice <!– ha, are you looking for more information?  oh there’s plenty to give you –>. And Clay was home so he judged his shoes and everything which amused me. Flatmates are so not subtle about giving you the thumbs up. I also think that leaving your laptop behind is also not very subtle<!– especially when they’ve already said that they’re not giving back your tshirt ever so that you have to see them again – swoon –>.

Later, I went to KateH’s new flat to pick her up and bring her home to my house for ‘The Secret Life of Us’. It was a brilliant episode tonight with Will and Ritchie getting stoned. “Have you got any beer?” Me and Katie were pissing ourselves. Afterwards I took her home and discovered Justin and Jason and Jeremy and some other guy were all at her house with her flatmate, so I offered to drive the boys into town and what drunken louts they were. We also stopped off to pick up Lovely Paul, and got lost in a maze of one way Arch Hill sts. But that’s okay cos we got there eventually. So yeah. And now I’m at home and I’m bored and it’s sometime after midnight but I had a red bull and a coffee this afternoon so I’ll easily be up until the Buffy re-run at 3am. Excellent. And tomorrow is Waitangi Day so it might be time for me to think about sovereignty.