Sandra...

Once upon a time I was sitting in the passenger seat of Sandra's Supercharged Holden Calais and whilst cruising up Flemmington Rd past EPIC I turned to her and asked, "So hey, you and me. How 'bout it?" 

She looked at me with less surprise than someone who didn't know us might expect, laughed and replied, "Nah, wouldn't want to spoil the friendship!" 

"Yeah, fair enough," I shrugged, "figured it was worth asking. You ever change your mind, let me know. So what do you want to do this afternoon? Catch a film or something?"

She never did, which everyone agrees was for the best, and we've been the closest of friends ever after. 

The End. 

Except the story doesn't end there any more than that being where it started. If you want to define nearly two decades of friendship based on as many seconds that probably does the job well enough, so by all means fuck back off to "20 Second Movie Reviews" and feed your short attention span. The real story is like an iceberg - whilst everyone's distracted by the polar bear clinging on for dear life, underneath the surface it's all sea lion-on-penguin carnage whilst the iceberg desperately tries to keep that wayward polar bear from drowning. 

Trying to understand a friendship like Sandra and mine from the highlight-reel is like thinking you've got a good grasp on Fight Club after watching the Trailer; Jack doesn't get Marla at the end, but they do start what comes next together, and just like Marla Singer, Sandra aka Sandra J--- N----- met me at a very strange time of my life. 

I vividly remember the moment she walked into my life, and the back-room of The Civic Hotel, dressed- and dolled-up in a way which nailed the inflection-point of "out to impress" and "but not trying too hard" so perfectly that the only thing more frictionless than her smile was the chocolate wheel spinning to the rattling sound of heads swivelling on creaking necks to see if it landed on "You're A Winner!" or "Better Luck Next Life". I distinctly remember hearing the thud of her Blind Date for the evening Garrick's jaw hitting the floor, which conveniently ensured my inner monologue muttering "Goddamn..." went unheard. 

An hour or so later, after she and Skye (who had helped me broker the event) trounced us at pool at least twice, I turned to him and murmured "If you don't make a move by the end of the next game, I'm going to," which he did, shortly after which the chocolate wheel stopped on the Glittery Gold "Grand Prize" segment. It rested there for the next year or so until eventually she reached up and tipped it over into Monkey-Poo Brown "REJECTED!", but that's not my story to tell. 

By the time that ended, Skye and I had bounced off each other's atmospheres which put me on a collision-course with Amanda, but with interconnected friendship networks, Garrick moving into my share-house, and the general Brownian-motion of social networks when you're in your 20's, there was plenty of opportunity for us to become friends independently of anything else, and that we did. 

It was years later, after Garrick and my friendship dissolved over an altercation at a party where I shirtfronted him for his bullshit behaviour (and in doing prevented his being mauled by two defensive Staffies and a back-yard full of people who were about to beat him down far less gently than I was offering to), and my relationship with Amanda evaporated like dew in the light of dawn in spring, that I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of her Calais, wondering. 

We'd never both been single at the same time, and the usual trigger points for such things had come and gone. We were deep in what you might call "The Friend Zone" for reasons more defined by "the way these things happen" than anything else, but we were tighter than a wog's wallet, and thicker than thieves, and I'd never forgotten that moment I'd first laid eyes on her, or that no threat I ever offered Garrick had been anything less than sincere. 

Sandra could hoist the engine out of a Barina, strip it, replace the gaskets, and have it back on the road in a weekend; she could strip the pride off a bloke half-again her size and bury him in shame in a heartbeat. She'd had more different jobs than I could count, could apply herself seemingly to anything and master it; for all that she'd refer to herself as a dumb under-educated country girl, she could catch up to all the undergrad degrees in the room, and keep up, all whilst pulling out tree stumps, quoting the CWA Cookbook, volunteering for NSW RFS, and pulling a mean burn-out. Here I was sitting across from a girl who could emasculate a backyard full of blokey-blokes by simply being herself and the only reason she didn't run the grill was because she knew how much I enjoyed searing meat, so she let me. 

All of that aside, "She's pretty, and I'm pretty funny," I thought, "and she's awesome, and I tell awesome stories, and she seems to like me, and I'd really like to know." We got along so effortlessly, smoother than cruising in a long-wheelbase tourer riding on well-balanced suspension. "That's what love's all about, isn't it?" 

I was right, but not in the way I was thinking at the time. 

So I asked, the wheel landed on a Warm Amber segment marked "Yeah, nah, but" and we carried on our merry way rejoicing. 

OK, I'll admit I was disappointed, but I refused to let that get in the way, let alone show, and the rejoicing followed in due course so for the purpose of selective-narrative let's just accept it as so. 

A year or so later I was in London having what would best be described as "a pretty hard time", and Sandra was the one who'd Skype me in the depths of my night whilst halo'd in afternoon sunshine from her front verandah and talk me down off the ledge again and again, saying "Remember who you are!". She was the one who told me: 

"remember this, one of the most endearing qualities that you have it that you want to be better and stronger than you were and you are always striving to be happy...... you are better than you believe yourself to be, you just have to look at yourself in the mirror and see what the rest of us see"
the zen art of looking for answers that you know don't exist... 

When I gave up and came home, she had a room set up for me with my own bed made and ready for me to fall into, and a set of keys waiting in the letterbox to let myself in after Scott picked me up from the airport. Sitting across from him at the table I recognised from the background of all those Skype calls I watched her come running up the path in her Independent Property Group pant-suit, sandy-blonde curls bouncing cherubic in the afternoon sun so her feet seemed to barely touch the ground, and the moment she threw herself into my arms I knew I was Home. 

Then she went inside and put the kettle on. 

Interlude:
Ricky: "How's your Sandra post going?"
"I wasn't going to do this in chronological order - with Smeghead I bounced around a lot.
Still, tears aside, I'm liking how this is flowing.
LOL..
'tears'
'flowing'
Sometimes I'm so sharp I cut myself."

A couple of months later her share-house in Garran dissolved and I followed her to Allison's place in Amaroo. In 2009 it seemed the edge of the world; Forde was a Display Village and Bonner the glint in an urban-planner's eye, but Buckingham Palace was home on the other side of Horse Park Drive from the dream of First Home Owner's Grants clad in bucolic pasture. The Mums ruled by fiat, with a Hoover-branded Sceptre held in bright-yellow cleaning glove-clad fists, but whilst I was woken every Saturday morning by the beating of a vacuum-head against my bedroom door my world was was filled with the cooing of a Laughing Turtledove, a kettle never far from boiling, and (when I felt motivated) the smell of fresh-baked scones. 
We had a freeloader who's name became FUCK YA! in my memory after Sandra tore strips off her one night (Allison and I hid in the corridor throughout prevaricating whether to intercede or break out the Corpse Disposal Kit). 
FUCK YA! departed shortly thereafter in Absolutely Not Suspicious Circumstances, to be replaced by Skye. 
The Porkening and The Porkening II: I Porked Them Good will forever go down in legend; not just because I cook a mean pork-roast, but because they resulted in 15 Minutes Of Silence. 
It was a good life, but as with all good things... 

I met Emma on a trip to Perth, and after an intense long-distance romance wrought of loneliness and a desperation for connection I found myself driving across the Nullarbor with Scott in the passenger seat of my tetris-packed Audi and Sandra waving tearfully from the doorstep of Buckingham Palace in my rear-view mirror. 

Musical interlude: Gotye - Save Me

Years later Emma was a traumatic memory, Jenna was my here-and-now, and my phone rang with Sandra's name on the Caller ID. 

"What are you doing on September 9th?" 
I think for a moment before answering, "Drinking Hefeweizen Dunkel in Berlin."
"What?"
"Hey, you asked, and on that day I'll be in Berlin so statistically... Why? You didn't go and do something silly like booking your wedding without checking with me first or something did you?"
"... HOW THE FUCK AM I GOING TO GET MARRIED WITHOUT YOU GIVING A SPEECH AND INSULTING EVERYONE?
"And, yes.
"Bastard!" 
What can I say? I have something of a reputation. 
"OK, let me think... actually, I have an idea."
"Oh?" 
"Leave it with me."

I hang up, and call Scott. 

"Dude!" 
"Dude, so I got a call from Sandra..."
"Yeah? So you going to get back for the wedding?" 
"Yeah about that," I explain the scheduling conflict, "but I got an idea. I was thinking: how about I write something and get you to read it?"
"Yeah I can do that. We've got time. Get it over to me, we'll workshop it, make it happen."
"Yeah, about that. I was thinking, y'know, for comedic value, maximum impact, what if I put something together and send it over to a 3rd party and they hand it to you in a sealed envelope and you open it 'The Winner Is...'-style on stage and you read it sight-unseen." 
"You... but... what... dammit! How do I let you talk me into this shit?"
"Because you know it'll be awesome, man. It always is."
"... fucking..."
"Leave it with me." 

8 months later, after hours of writing all of that and more into the script, editing, rehearsing on passing strangers who knew none of these people, pouring more than a decade of adoration onto the page, agonising, culling, adding, removing, then editing some more, performing it again and again until I wasn't just sure it sounded right, but that it would sound like it was me saying it when read by Scott, Allison handed Scott a sealed envelope in front of nearly 100 people. He opened it, and proceeded to read, whilst in Germany I drank Hefeweizen Dunkel and waited for scantily-clad himbo-assassins from the Firefighters Calendar to descend and turn me into a greasy red smear on the Fredrichschain pavement because from the far side of the globe I had managed to Rickroll a wedding (for the second time) by proxy so adeptly that even the proxy didn't see it coming (although Skye, I'm told, caught it 5 or 10 seconds out). 

"Has it happened? How did it go?" I messaged, anxious to know how much longer I had to kiss my girlfriend goodbye. 
"Yes, and Sandra says 'You're an unbelievable bastard', and 'she loves you'."
"I love her too."

To this day, the feeling remains mutual ever after. 

Cold comfort..

Musical accompaniment: The Presets - Feel Alone/Girl and the Sea

One of the surprise benefits of the apartment I moved into has been how warm it's been. It might have been -1'C when I was walking home from the pub the other night, but with winter nearly a fortnight old I'm still yet to start layering the blankets, let alone turn the heating on. This is great because it means I'm not spending a whole lot of money on power, but it also means that I'm still not getting out anywhere near as much as I'd intended to. 

I'd such high hopes coming home to the 'berra - "new view, new you," and all that. Six storeys up certainly provides for a great view, but it seems I packed the same old me along with my CD collection, and my new ~600m altitude (above sea level. It's only 30m above the pavement) is certainly higher than my old place I've been finding that hope, like the warmth of the afternoon sun, is fading. The jokes I made about how I could "be a miserable, lonely workaholic anywhere" were a little too easy to fall back on. 

Perhaps I'm being overly critical - I AM being more sociable than I was in Perth after all. Over the long-weekend just gone I managed to get out and spend time with different people every day out of the last four which, I'm sure you'll agree, is a big step up if you're keeping score. You can't say I'm not trying, but it all feels so much like tyres spinning on an icy uphill slope. I may have turned a corner when I decided to acknowledge that I didn't want to be lonely any more, but for all that I can see for miles the horizon is featureless; I have no idea which way to go. 

It seems that "deciding to not be lonely" was the easy bit. 
Doing something about that requires "deciding to not be miserable" which is, for me at least, a whole other thing. 

I'm taking some comfort from the little wins tho, like managing to "not have so much stuff". It's been a long time since I felt the urge to fill the empty spaces with things for the sake of it, but I was still regularly guilty of letting myself sprawl. So far I've managed to (mostly) fit the stuff I have into the space I have available, and my pad has a pleasantly "lived-in clutter", but apart from tripping and falling into Revolution CD the other week I've been distinctly disinterested in acquiring more things. The space vacated by 'things' has been gradually filling with 'thoughts', and whilst ideas and memories can be heavy, and only get heavier, and sometimes it feels you've not the strength to carry them around, they take up very little space; they may unpack to cover a continent, but they always condense back into the volume defined by my skull so I don't even need a suitcase to carry my baggage around. 

Perhaps I was misguided when I decided I needed to learn how to dating, and instead just need to learn how to be better company for myself. Now if only I could learn how to be less of a dickhead... 

Hostage negotiations ("We do not negotiate with terrorists")...

 Musical starting point: 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐆𝐀𝐒𝐌 - "God Of War" 

I found myself thinking a week or three ago, "Y'know what, fuck this. I don't need this fucking job." I paused in that moment, calculated, and realised "Oh no. I actually do. Fuck..."

"Nobody puts Baby in a corner," and nobody puts Pete in a box. If you want to get shit done, you airdrop Pete where he can see the horizon, say "the arses in need of kicking are thattaway," and the only thing that will slow me down will be needing to change boots. Where things go south is when people fuck up my target acquisition; if my arsehole-detector senses you're full of shit, there's a very real chance I'll ignore the fleeing posterior(s) in front of me and wind up coming back at you boot-first. 

And there's nothing that blips my "arsehole" radar quite like hypocrisy. 

Let me be clear that I don't enjoy thinking like this. I was brought up to turn the other cheek, see the other side, seek peace; "I cherish peace with all my heart", but just like Chris "Peacemaker" Smith, deep down underscoring everything people tried to layer over the top, and whilst I WANT to do good and bring positive things to the world, I can't be so naïve to believe the way to do this is to be a lamb, or even a lion. I died a thousand deaths before being reborn for war. Sometimes the hero the world needs is *a horrible cunt. 

I just try to hold that in reserve, because the way I see it that's the differentiator between *"I can be" and *"I am". 

But if you wanna dance motherfucker, let's dance. 

So if you take a Weapon of Mass Disruption and box it in don't be the last thing it sees when the lid closes unless you want to bump yourself up the target priority list, and absolutely do NOT be the first thing it sees when it claws its way out. 

I'd run away, but i can't. Half a million dollars of personal debt says I'm a hostage to this fucking job. Note the word "personal", because we're not in Professional any more, Toto. Whilst the Seven P's of Project Management ("Proper Preparation & Planning Prevent Piss-Poor Performance") should be a solid baseline for risk-management, you can't control all the variables and every once in a while you find yourself executing the best of strategies, falling to earth out of an aeroplane which just exploded, held aloft on a parachute that's on fire, and the Rock upon which you built your plans is far less Gibraltar than it is Fraggle. 

Now imagine how pissed off you'd be in that situation, crank that up to 11, multiply by Ezekiel 25:17, and you have a rough idea about the Old Testament-level shitstorm falling from heaven at terminal velocity on butterfly-wings of flame that I currently personify. 

Is this a boot you see before you, its heel towards your face?
You're damned fucking right it is, and you'll need more than some Spray & Wipe and Pontius Pilot-style hand-wringing to rub out this damned spot. 

Parkway Drive - Swing
If you think Stockholm Syndrome will save you, you obviously misunderstood the EULA:
"This machine was born for battle
This contract paid for war."

And if it's war they want... 

So let me save you the effort of looking up the definition of "nemesis":
Oxford: "a downfall caused by an inescapable agent."
Merriam Webster: "one that punishes or avenges: a formidable and usually victorious rival or opponent."
Guy Ritchie (via Brick Top): "A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me."

Think I'm being melodramiatic?
Well fuck you. 
Fuck him. 
Fuck her. 
Fuck all of you. 
And fuck your little dog, too.
This is my bread and butter you're fucking with, and it's my hard-sold trust that got broke. 

The first part of that demands a response at the very least. 
The second determines what "Arsehole Tax" multiplier gets applied to the line item on my invoice. 

Break the rules and I could call the umpire, but he's a toothless muppet so fuck that guy as well; I'll change the fucking game. We might have been playing a gentlemanly game of Chess before, but now it's Doom, motherfucker.
Mick Gordon - The Only Thing They Fear Is You

"Obviously, this has nothing to do with classical music whatsoever, and who cares, right? Like, this music is to evoke the sheer brutality, and the raw power, that you possess, against every single one of the enemies that you'll fight, and every single one of Hell's creations against you. And it's so empowering, and dominant, and forceful, and it just punches you right in the freaking face, and there's so much, like just raw strength I hear from this that's just incredible." 
"It just feels like raw destruction... There's this super-intense animalist essence to this... It feels like the chainsaw just slicking through enemies left and right. It's really evocative, like The World On Fire... and you coming in there being the only person that can do anything to save the planet... you're also an incredible bad-ass who's not scared of anything... there's that real sense of 'I'm going to take your business and you're going to be fodder beneath my feet'."
Opera Singer Reacts: The Only Thing They Fear is You)