PERHAPS MARK AND G
I’m too tired to explain the whole thing. On top of that, my respiratory system has taken one hell of a stand and is blocking all oxygen to my brain. We are running on fumes over here at the FARCEBLOG headquarters. Figurative fumes, of course. See above.
But part of the thing, that I can do.
The locals at Sydney pubs need their own genre. There should be a book about these people already. Is there one? Would someone pay me to write it? Let me know.
Cue Monday night. The Strawberry Hills Hotel. I struggle up the mountain and see Babeface at a table with two men and a girl. I know at least one person is a uni friend, I am unsure about the other two. As I mentioned in that other post, BF picks up strangers whenever she enters a bar. After some fuckaround, I come to understand the girl is from uni and the two gentlemen – Mark (perhaps) and G – are stragglers. Hilarious stragglers at that.
I don’t care about Mark (perhaps). It looks like he had a stroke or a mother with a drug problem, I don’t know. He seems lovely but I can’t understand half of what he says, and I soon find out that the sickening smell wafting in and out of play is coming from his leg. His mother fucking leg. I assure him it is not his leg, but after he leaves for a bit and the smell goes with him I cannot stand to be within earshot.
So I’m faced with G. The dude has “CONVICT” tattooed up the inside of his arm. He looks like a bouncer, but he’s making me laugh so I let it slide. I want to know if he was in jail and why he was in jail, so I hum my way through whatever shit we’re shooting and steer the conversation towards the boob. Disqualified driving and distribution of drugs. G was a speed dealer, and he hasn’t had his license since 1986.
We discuss the fact I was not even alive in 1986, and then he explains laws about mandatory loss of license and incarceration. We discuss The System, and how he has been touched by it. We discuss the Mental Health Act, which has kept him out of jail. We discuss money, and a law suit he’s hoping to see a lot of it from. I won’t go in to details here, but yet another Anglican community group reveals its history as a predator.
We discuss the process of maturing, we discuss women, we discuss de ja vu.
“De ja vu is just a sign that you’re on the right track,” offers G.
And what the fuck, I wonder, is a shit hot line like that doing in a shit hole like this. That’s the type of soundbyte that gets forgotten.
G is like that, though. He flips between gentile road scholar and all-out scoundrel. One moment he is talking poignantly about his broken heart, the next moment he is yelling at strangers about Red Tube.
G finishes telling me how proud he is that he hasn’t smoked in six weeks, that he’s on Zyban because Champix didn’t help, that he’s too old for destructive behaviour. He finishes telling me about that and then grabs some tobacco off his friend and rolls himself a cigarette.
“I’m so disappointed in you, G. Do you feel like a cunt?” I ask.
“Why, have you got one?”



