Читать книгу The Friday Night Debrief - Kylie Jane Asmus - Страница 9
ОглавлениеThe Wish Lischt
Another Friday night at home, alone. To be fair, Kylie had tried attending various social occasions but they all ended up being unhappy, lonely events devoid of any real connections with other human beings. Depressed and worn down further by deprecating self-assessment, Kylie finally convinced herself that she was destined for bachelorhood. Her little flat was hot and still with not a breath of sea breeze to relieve the heat and humidity. Front and centre at her own pity party, she was keeping close company with her one and only guest, Mr Jim Beam.
She sat at her dining room table, with a pen in one hand, a Jim Beam and coke in the other. Sketching a rough family tree on the scribble pad in front of her, she realised there were many unmarried, unattached individuals who were clearly unmotivated to be anything but ‘singular sods’ in her extended family. Kylie had always thought that one day she would make someone very happy. But after three months living alone, without any social interaction with anyone from the opposite sex who was single and no one to talk to in person at all after she finished work, it was now clear to her amidst the boozy haze that this dream had come to the end of the road.
Kylie’s main reason for leaving Mount Isa had been to find a husband. Her years of searching the arid man-scape of North West Queensland had yielded nothing but disappointment and an unfurnished ring finger. Since arriving in Townsville, Kylie had kept her eyeballs peeled for possible suitors. Yet all she had seen so far were men holding hands with men on shopping night, married men at work and eighteen-year-old pimply teenage attendants in the takeaway and bottle shops she now heavily frequented.
The trigger for this wallow into self-doom was an email she had received earlier that day from a girlfriend back home. Kylie had learnt that her ex-boyfriend, who she referred to as “Don’t”, had found another girlfriend as soon as she had left town. Despite the fact that Kylie and Don’t were very much split up and she definitely didn’t want him back, the knowledge that she had no one and he had someone made her wonder how fair life really was? She had broken it off with him so that a forever someone could come her way but no one had. Now Don’t was no longer spending nights alone in Single Land, and more than likely being the same prick as he ever was to the new bird, yet Kylie seemed destined to be living in Alone Town forever, population one.
Kylie had driven home from work, parked her car on the street outside her apartment, walked across the road to the bottle shop and bought two bottles of 750 ml Jim Beam and ten litres of coke. This was in addition to the box of thirty coke cans she already had in her refrigerator. She also bought a bag of ice and had slowly lugged the entire shopping spree back to her house and up her twenty-two stairs. After emptying the bag of ice into her kitchen sink, she made the first of many, many, many icy cold drinks to mend her sad and broken heart.
From 5.30 pm that Friday afternoon she drank steadily. She had changed into her comfortable summer pyjama set and put a pair of socks on to keep her feet warm and this is how she stayed until she spilt her drink on herself hours later and needed a change of clothes. She drank and drank and drank and drank. Occasionally she dozed off but continued her binge as soon as she woke again. No teeth brushing, no hair combing, one very long shower but very little food and the only other regular hygiene habit she adhered to during her lost weekend was to wash her hands after many a required toilet break in between topping up her very frequent empty cup.
After seven hours of drinking, more than a few tears and the playing of many a sad country music song, Kylie remembered her Wish Lischt. The Wish Lischt was a list of hand written qualities that she had penned and kept in the back of her diary as a reminder to herself not to sway from what she had always wanted in a man, no matter how old, crusty or desperate she became. Kylie was determined not to settle for anything less than 90% of what she originally specified in her Wish Lischt. The irony of the current situation was that no-one at all was determined to settle down with her, so her qualities were apparently low on the sort after lists of Townsville men.
Kylie went to her bedroom, picked up her diary and tore the Lischt from the back page. Glancing at the paper in her hand, she noticed that on each corner of the page was a smiley face. Smileys were her signatory doodle – something she had forgotten for the last few miserable weeks. In between the smiley faces, there were also doodles of diamond rings. With tears threatening to fall again, she walked back to the kitchen to refill her drink to salute her lischt one last time. It appeared that her wish lischt was nothing more than a modern day fairy tale that would never be realised and she would be a spinster for the term of her natural life.
She sat on the lounge room floor, in between the two couches and took a lazy uncoordinated swig of her drink, letting the excess bourbon dribble down her chin and onto her pyjama’s. Holding up the list she read each item out loud as if addressing an invisible crowd. Along with each quality, she also read out the explanation written underneath it as to why she put it on the list in the first place.
Thou must be a great communicator
If you are unable to discuss everything, how can you expect to solve anything? Looks fade but the ability to communicate openly between your partner and yourself will assist in your relationship overcoming the highest of hurdles. Plus I never shut up, so either he’s up for a chat or I’m out of the race, before it even starts.
Thou Must have a Sense of Humour
Humour is my way of dealing with situations. Good or bad, unfortunate or ironic, if you can see the funny side of almost anything, you are on the right path to living stress free. I believe Humour and Optimism go hand in hand. For example: Live it, see what happens, and if it goes to shit, take and learn something positive out of it so hopefully it won’t happen again.
Thou Must have a Kind and Loving Heart
This is not a big ask and I’m willing to give mine in return so fair’s fair.
Thou Must Not Be the Owner of Pasty Hands
The expression “Holy Cold Fish Hands Batman” shall never be uttered by mine self or anyone shaking the palm of my husband to be. Hands should be warm and strong and feel like home. There should be some kind of magnetism betwixt the offerer and the receiver of the hand holding gesture.
Thou Must Live within 5 kms of Me
I am not fussed on commuting back and forth from a man’s place who lives outside my 5 km exclusion zone, it would mean I would have to be more organised and that would require more self-discipline.
Thou Must Know How to Fix Shit
From many dinners out I have found myself dealing with pasty handed men who could barely take the cork out of my wine bottle let alone fix a blocked drain or a blocked dunny. Dunnys are and always will be blocking at my house. A keen vegetarian and lover of all things fibrous, lentil, curried or Mexican based, I proclaim mine self a “Mad Shitter” for whom only the toughest of toilets could take the brunt of my bi-weekly visits. And I re-iterate that I proclaim to be a “Mad Shitter” not a frequent one.
Thou Must Have a Trade
Perhaps in line with the ability to know how to fix shit, there would be nothing worse than being with a ‘man’ who was weaker than myself and borrowed my pink tool set to put a D.I.Y. item together. And more importantly, I have always admired people who could stick at something for four years to be eternally qualified, it was something out of my reach and vocational desire. Of course you could be a trade qualified chef and I still wouldn’t be happy, chefs are never home and do they really want to come home and cook me a lovely dinner after being at work all day cooking up a storm? So, not all Tradie’s are eligible.
Thou Must Be Able to Take Care of Themself – i.e. Cook, Clean, Iron, Wash Clothes and Pick Up After Thy Self
I have enough trouble doing my OWN chores, let alone being someone else’s mother. I would have no trouble sharing the above duties but I flat out refuse to be someone’s Kitchen Bitch, Cleaning Lady, Ironing Lady, Washer Woman, and/or Waitress. One in all in, or buggar off you lazy pest.
Thou Must Have Own Car
What does it say about a person when they are an adult, live in a city that has a shonky “hail and ride” on a “sometimes schedule” public transport system if they don’t have wheels? If they can’t drive, they can walk the plank out of contention of hanging out and being cool with me.
Thou Must Have a Family that is Easy to Get Along with – i.e. Their Parents Must Have Human Qualities, a Sense of Humour and No Pokie Addictions
I have seen how many old buggars hang out at Clubs and RSLs just to donate their pensions to the bright lights of the pokies and I’m not into witnessing that on an ongoing basis. That’s not in my lischt of things to do. Neither is a man who’s Mother hates my guts or doesn’t laugh at anything that is actually funny, said by me or anyone.
Thou Must Be Active
This is something I could possibly forego, since I have enough issues of my own conducting physical forms of exercise.
Thou Must Have a Secure and Long-Term Job
Due to my eternal desire to land a permanent job, I expect nothing less than the same from any spouse worthy of hanging out and being cool with me. It’s nice to have dreams but it’s better to have stability whilst funding the possibility of bringing the dream to fruition. So while I’m not a bubble burster, I’m foremost a stability junkie.
Thou Must Not Be a Tight Arse
Bum jokes aside, there’s a time and a place for being frugal but it ain’t at every opportunity. I will only accept 5% Frugality to 95% Making Hay While The Sun Shines. I struggle with the attitude that you should save almost everything for retirement. What happens if you kark it straight after you retire and you don’t end up living at all? What if you have been a miserable prick all your life with your money, who would want to mingle with you anyway? You would be entering whinging old miserable bastage age by the time you let loose on your bank account. So Fishes, Frogs, and Ducks have no need to apply.
Nice to haves
Light eyes
A love or tolerance of Country Music
Will pick the pants out of my bum should I encounter a wedgie.
By the end of the list, tears were flowing freely and she was in full acceptance of her seemingly unlovable-ness and the too high expectations of her wish lischt. She ripped the page into three pieces, crumpled it up into a loose twist and walked over to the already tied up kitchen rubbish bag and poked it in to the top of the bag in a drunken attempt to discard it forever.
With tears streaming down her face she grabbed the steadily disappearing bottle of Jim Beam, a 1.5 litre bottle of coke and another milkshake size plastic cup and walked over to her CD Player. Then she tugged at her box of CDs, spilling them all onto the floor. “Where are you ladies? I need you!” she slurred, rifling through the many country music discs she owned for her favourite group The Dixie Chicks. “There you are my darlings,” she said and put the Wide Open Spaces, Home, and Taking the Long Way albums into her six-stacker CD, leaving the other three spaces empty. Setting the song selection to random, she hit play.
“Am I The Only One?” played first. Kylie turned the volume up to a little over half way and crawled to her lounge room window. Placing her drink on the sill, she pulled the couch over so that she could rest her elbows on the window sill and her knees on the comfort of the arm rest. She sang along with the song at the top of her voice and in between the shuffle function finding the next song she could hear a dog barking next door and cats calling from outside on the street. It was the first noise from outside that she had heard since getting home after work. When the next song started playing she didn’t care about conversing with the dog, she just chose instead to communicate with the cats. The next song to play was “Voice Inside my Head”, which was normally one of Kylie’s favourite songs from the Chicks. But tonight it was a cat calling cry, a tool for Kylie to convey her feelings to the felines in the neighbourhood and hopefully for them to feel welcome enough to scratch at her door and let her pat them from now on. If there was a Doctor Pusslittle that spoke directly to moggies, Kylie was it.
“Meow Meow Meow Meow, Meow Meow Meow Meow, Me-yow, Me-yow, Me-yow, Me-yow Me-yow, Mee-yooow, ee-yow, ma rowo, rowo, rowo, rowo row row,” Kylie sang, perched up on her window sill like a feline herself.
Kylie’s faux feline reciprocation not only triggered a response from the neighbourhood cats but also started all three of the dogs howling from across the road. Kylie was slowly but surely, pet by pet, pissing off the neighbourhood in the wee hours of morning.
“I Believe in Love” came on next and she was all out of meows and just sat there with tears running down her face, some falling into her drink from the end of her nose. There were a lot of happy songs on those three CDs but every sad and lonely song played on shuffle for Kylie that night – Heartbreak Town, Hello Mr Heartache, Once You’ve Loved Somebody, You Were Mine, I’ll Take Care of You, and Cold Day in July. Every song epitomised the loneliness she felt and the sadness she thought she would never pull herself out of. Even her favourite “Goodbye Earl” was sung with venom and spite instead of her normal sass.
After the songs began to repeat themselves she pressed stop and turned on the television to watch Rage. The difference in music enabled her to dance but after an hour the guest programmer for the night started picking music Kylie had never heard of so she turned off the sound and kept the light of the TV on for company as she swapped her country music CDs over for her best of the Nineties selection and a mixed CD that had songs on it by Safri Duo “Played-A-Live The Bongo Song” and “Swamp Thing” by The Grid. As soon as she pressed play the songs played one after the other and she erupted from the floor in an excitable bopping frenzy, running into the kitchen to find pots and pans she could play the bongo’s on and air guitar the banjo out of Swamp Thing. There was almost a smile on her face until she flashbacked to the times she used to dance to this very music with all her friends at the Irish Club back home.
It was about this time that she went foraging for food. Finding a couple of bags of chips in a cupboard, she grabbed both and threw them on opposing couches so she would have a bag close by no matter where she ended up sitting. Handfuls of chips were stuffed into her mouth as if she was consumed by the fear of starvation. Half the chips were being spilt down the front and inside her pyjama top and she washed each mouthful of chips down with sloppy gulps of bourbon, which would pour out each side of her mouth and be left for her forearm to wipe up. Kylie was a mess. Luckily she was sitting on her own mat on the lounge room floor when she spilt half her cup down the front of her face. Her pyjama top soaked up most of the overflow and after unsuccessfully trying to suck the bourbon out of her top she wrung the liquid out of the fabric into her cup and drank it. After all, she didn’t want to waste any of it.
After eleven long hours of hooking into it, Kylie thought she might feel better if she had a shower. But actually she didn’t feel better at all. As she took her clothes off, chips fell all over the bathroom floor and the wet weight of her shirt dropped heavily onto the bath mat. She opened the glass shower door and immediately sat on the floor of the shower. Putting all her weight onto her left bum cheek, she was completely unaware that it rested partly on the shower drain and folded her arms over her bent knees, her head facing towards the floor. The sad and blank expression on her face emulated the nothingness she had felt for most of the night.
For over forty-five minutes she sat unmoving, unknowingly pressing an impression of the shower drain into her left bum cheek. Then, after feeling some discomfort she got up soaped herself all over including her feet. Slipping on the suds she landed back on the floor with her opposite bum cheek pressed to the same drain that had already left an imprint on her left side. “Ow,” she said through the garble of the water from the shower head.
There were no water wise points being scored tonight. Kylie was using enough water to flood a rice paddy. For nearly two hours she sat on the floor of the shower, her head buried in between her knees and her weight shifting periodically from right cheek to left cheek. It was only when she reached out for her drink and realised it was empty that she decided it was time to get out and pour herself another one. She gave herself a quick going over with the soap, this time while she remained seated, and washed it off before finally turning the taps off. Her head remained hung as she stepped out and swung her arm aimlessly around searching for a towel.
She picked up the clothes she had on prior to her shower but they were wet so she wrapped a towel around her, took the wet clothes and threw them in the laundry tub. Stumbling into her bedroom, she picked up a pair of boxer shorts and a t-shirt off the floor and put them on. It made no difference to her that they were both inside out and since the bedroom light was off she didn’t realise until much later.
As Kylie had dropped her towel two red marks were very noticeable on the left and right cheeks of her buttocks. The shower drain had left very distinct imprints on her skin. From the partial glow of the hallway light, the imprints perfectly resembled the cockpit windscreens from the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars fame. The welts were starting to hurt and Kylie had rubbed at them blindly before pulling on her boxer shorts.
After getting dressed she stumbled back to the kitchen and found another cup in which to pour yet another drink. She was hungry again and wanting something more substantial than chips so she searched for something tasty, first in the fridge, then in all of the cupboards. In a disoriented state she stumbled around the kitchen and left cupboard doors and drawers open as she looked for elusive foodstuffs. Hidden in the bottom drawer, she found the emergency essentials packet her father had given her the day she left home. Deciding that her current state constituted an emotional emergency, and in desperate need of some form of connection, Kylie reached for the parcel .
The brown paper parcel was tied up with a string bow and it had a tag which read: “This little parcel has been packed full of love, to assist in the event of an emergency, and only to be opened, by A Baby. Love Dad.”
“Ohhhh,” she said as her face crumpled up and the tears started again.
Kylie pulled the string bow and opened up the packet to find eleven items, each individually wrapped with a little note containing a description and a number from one to eleven.
Number 1 was candles for use in a blackout.
Number 2 were a dozen boxes of matches for when she did a really mad shit and needed to light one up to mask the stench she had created from possible guests. These matches could save their life! Or she could use them to keep her candles alight.
Number 3 was a Maglite torch with a one-foot handle on it – to be stored under the bed and used as a weapon on any burglars, should they turn up in the middle of the night.
Number 4 was some heavy duty masking tape to fix up anything that might break or come apart or to secure the burglar she intercepted with Number 3.
Number 5 was a block of chocolate to help mend a broken heart.
Number 6 was a radio to listen to songs that reminded her of the times she had spent dancing with her friends and to hear any cyclone updates.
Number 7 was some rope so she could tie up any loose ends.
Number 8 was a little toolkit to repair anything that needed a little mend.
Number 9 were various glues to help her out when she was in a sticky situation
Number 10 was a bag of two-dollar gold coins to get her a ticket home if she ever missed the company of her friends or family.
Number 11 was a plastic mould with a smiley face on it and the word Smile written on it that you could position on a piece of bread and press firmly on it then place the bread in the toaster and the message would be visible when the toast browned.
Kylie loved Smiley faces and her Dad had called her Smiley Kylie all her life so it turned her frown upside immediately, until she realised something.
“Ahh fark, I don’t have any flamin’ bread!” she said sadly.
She ripped open the slab of chocolate and took a bite. She had tears running down her face from the joy she had found by opening up each little gift in the emergency parcel but sadness in her heart from feeling so alone.
Kylie sat on the kitchen floor and curled up into the foetal position and cried. When she sat up again, she wrapped up the chocolate and pushed it aside and poked through the items from the parcel. Picking up the masking tape, she slipped it on her left arm like a bracelet and crawled back to the lounge room, grabbed her drink and continued on her crawl to the bedroom. Pulling up stumps in front of her mirror, she took a good hard look at herself, as she continued to sip at her drink. She looked dishevelled, her shower had not washed her mascara away, her face looked tired, her hair was messy from drying wet and not being brushed. There she sat on the floor, amongst a pile of clean laundry that she had not yet folded or put away, when she saw her Lycra bike pants. A smile found its way onto her face. After taking a sip of her drink, she grabbed the bike pants and spread them out on her lap. Pulling the tape bracelet off her arm, she took a length of tape, cut it with her teeth then crumpled it up and repeated the process. She stuck both pieces of tape side by side onto the Lycra bike pants and then pulled off a large straight piece and stuck it under the crumpled bits. Then she completed her stick-a-thon by adding a final piece of semi-circular shaped tape under the other straight one. She wrestled her way into the Lycra bike pants pulling them up over her boxer shorts, then she picked up her drink, carefully and awkwardly made it to the standing position – without spilling a drop – and stood with her back to the full-length mirror. Turning her head towards her reflection, she introduced herself to her newly created friend, Smiley Duds.
“Allo allo allo. What do we ’ave ’ere then?” Kylie asked the reflection of her arse, which resembled a smiley face.
“I don’t have ears? I’m just a face!” it replied in a deeper voice – born from the same mouth as Kylie.
“A Face?” Kylie said to her new friend. “What sort of face are you?”
“I’m Bum Face?”
“Allo Bum face! I... am.... Shit faced!” She laughed, raising her drink to the mirror.
Kylie clenched then unclenched her bum cheeks together repeatedly to make her taped creation’s mouth move to reflect the motion of laughter. “That’s funny,” Bum Face said.
“Have you been here long?” Kylie asked her rear.
“I’ve been hanging around all of your life, you’ve just ignored me until now!”
“I don’t remember ever hearing from you?”
“What? Are you deaf? I’m always chiming in after dinner?”
“Really? After every dinner?” Kylie ars-ed.
“You’re a vegetarian, it’s inevitable! Don’t you remember what I said the other night....you know, after the tacos?”
“Oh shit! That was you!”
“That was me.”
“Maaaaate, you stink!” Kylie said disgusted.
“Me? Stink? I don’t think so. But I don’t have a nose so I can’t tell. Though I do have an eye I can’t see out of.”
“Ripped off mate. Least you have a voice!”
“Yes, lucky I am to have a voice. All be it one that people usually run away from when I am heard. Look, I know it’s a bit arse about face but maybe we should chat more often?”
“Maybe, we’ll have to sort out an easier way Butt, my neck flamin’ hurts, I think I’m feeling a twitch?”
“Oh don’t start talking to her!”
“What? Who?” Kylie was confused.
“Forget it. Hey, I was just wondering, does my face make your arse look big?” Bum Face asked.
“As a matter of fact yes, you do look quite wide. Have you always been that elongated?” Kylie asked.
“No, I haven’t. I’ve been on an expansion project since you left the Isa. What’s up with you broadening my outlook?”
“What are you talking about, you cyclops? How was I supposed to notice you were getting bigger? I can’t see you! My eyeballs point this away! You are behind me! Shouldn’t you be keeping an eye on it?”
“I told you, I can’t see shit.”
“I can’t believe it, I’m harbouring a smart arse, that can’t see shit, but ironically hangs out with an arsehole every day.”
Bum Face burred up, “Who are you calling an arsehole? Shit Faced? Maybe if I wasn’t so BIG, you wouldn’t be so SINGLE!”
“Oh that’s bloody lovely. Kick me when I’m down,” Kylie said sniffling and wiping her nose on her forearm.
“I’m only being honest, you wouldn’t want me to lie to you would ya?”
“No, so I guess I arsed for that,” Kylie whimpered.
“Let’s make a deal, if you don’t make me the butt of all your jokes, I’ll help you get back your smaller Bum Face.”
“How are you going to do that?” Kylie asked, thinking her mind was in charge of her decisions, not her arse.
“I’ll have a chat with the gang in plumbing and colonics. If we work as a team, we might be able to move some stuff out of storage for you.”
“Really? You’d do that for me?”
“I’d love to. Plus it will help get rid of this acne I have on my Bum Face.”
“That ain’t acne,” said Kylie eyes wide open “That’s....”
“Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it!” said Bum Face, afraid of the “C” word, cellulite.
“Oh okay. I’ll let you live in Egypt if you want. Seems like I have been!” said Kylie.
“What do you mean?” Bum Face asked.
“You’re living in De-Nile mate. Get it?”
“Oh dear!” Bum face seemed to frown.
“So? Where to from here?” Kylie took another sip of her drink.
“I’ll keep a blind eye on things back here until Lycra becomes your friend again, and maybe you could do me a favour?”
“Sure, anything for you Bum Face.”
“Wear some duds that are a size smaller than what you fit into, sometimes I get hungry but I don’t want to eat, it’s a bit like having some chewy, but please don’t wear anymore of those nasty G-Bangers, they give me a splitting headache!”
“Righto! It’s a deal, but wait, how will I lose the girth in your cheeks Bum face?”
“Far out love, do what everyone else does. Exercise, join a sport, eat a balanced diet! You do everything arse about face, the things you should have a little of, you have excessively and the amount of time you should spend outdoors, you spend indoors, it ain’t rocket science, you need to MOVE your arse to lose your arse!”
“No shit?”
“Wrong! You’ll also need to do that to help you shift kilos. But leave that with me. You need to make a start on the new you.”
Kylie looked at her watch. “It’s 6 am and I’m literally talking out of my arse. I don’t think we should be exercising right now.”
“Perhaps not now, but definitely tomorrow. Go and look out your window, what do you see?”
“It’s bloody dark,” said Kylie .
“Your front window, go and look out your front window and tell me, what do you see?”
Kylie walked to the window near the dining table and looked out towards the Strand. “Jeepers, someone opened up a can of fitness freaks. There’s flamin’ walkers, joggers, and there’s even people out on the water, in like, a long skinny boat.”
“I can’t see it Can-new?”
“Oh yeah, it is too!” Kylie said squinting to get a better look.
“Any of those ideas take your fancy?”
“There seems to be a few people stashed in that canoe, I might have a crack at that,” Kylie said as she sat down at the dining table.
“OW! You just sat on my face.”
“Sorry mate,” said Kylie but did not budge. She stared out the window at the glistening ocean and the faint sound of ‘Huts’ from the canoe teams was carried across the still water into her drunken ear space.
Kylie was exhausted. She fell asleep with her head in her right arm, then fell off the chair and onto the floor. There she lay until the midday sun woke her. With her eyes still firmly closed, she crawled into her bedroom and felt her way into her bed. Waking at 8 pm, she stumbled to the toilet, before going straight back to bed. She didn’t wake up until 6am the next morning, and it was clear that her agreement with Bum Face had kicked in, he had begun moving stuff out of storage for her. Since she was now awake, she decided not to go back to bed, but instead put on her exercise shorts, her socks and sandshoes, grabbed her hat, house keys and a 1.5 litre bottle of cold water and headed outside. It was a brand new day and she was ready to face it. Bum face came along for the walk too; he was just incognito under her shorts. With every step Kylie took, you could see the outline of him smiling.
Kylie felt alive, refreshed and reborn by the time she got back to her flat but received a rude shock when she opened the door. “Ughhhhht! Who made this friggin’ mess?” she asked, wondering who else had been in her flat the previous night. “Oh man, it was me,” she admitted, taking responsibility for the mess and for the cleanup operation. Empty coke bottles and cans and plastic cups were strewn all over the kitchen bench top, the dining room table and lounge room floor, open chip packets spilled chips onto the lounge and the floor, and her CD collection was scattered across the carpet which smelt of stale booze, and a stiff ocean breeze was blowing items of rubbish haphazardly around the room.
She walked into the kitchen and filled up the sink with hot water and detergent. The ice had melted away and the only evidence of it was the empty plastic ice bag lying near the toaster. Looking around the room she grimaced at the task ahead of her. She already had two garbage bags full of rubbish tied up and ready to take down to the rubbish bin, and the next morning was garbage collection day. Kylie grabbed the garbage bag roll from underneath the sink and started filling it with rubbish. Working in a clockwise direction from the kitchen to the dining area to the lounge room, she then broke off to her bedroom, the spare bedroom, the toilet, the bathroom and finally the laundry and filled up two garbage bags worth of rubbish. Then she got out the vacuum cleaner and vacuumed the carpet, the tiles in the kitchen and the bathroom, and finished up with the mop and bucket. She followed her nose to find a damp, bourbon-stained mat in the lounge room which she picked up and threw into the laundry tub.
Kylie found the smiley face toast maker and put it on the kitchen bench ready to use the next time she bought bread. Gathering the remaining gifts from her dad’s emergency parcel into a basket, she placed it on the kitchen bench to remind herself that she came from a loving family that really cared about her. After cleaning the entire flat she felt a renewed energy and decided to start the day off with a positive action seeing as she had spent most of the weekend in misery.
Grabbing all the rubbish bags, she headed downstairs and placed them all in the bin. The bag with the torn and crumpled Wish Lischt, now in three pieces, sat on top of the pile. After retrieving her bike from upstairs, she pointed the front wheel in the direction of the Strand, deciding to head out towards Rowes Bay and Pallarenda. Kylie wanted to hug the coastline as she was hungry for the thing she had missed while living in the Outback of North West Queensland, the ocean. She pedalled along the road then swapped over to the bike path, sweating out pure bourbon as she powered her way along the northern coastline. She had enough time to ponder how to make last night never happen again. “Okay, you might be single for the rest of your life and never marry. That doesn’t mean you can’t find friends and start enjoying your life here,” she told herself as her legs pushed her along the winding cement path.
By the time she arrived back home she stunk on the outside but felt renewed on the inside. “Starting today, you are going to make small changes. More exercise, better food, and open your eyes to new things, take every opportunity that presents itself, even if you think you will fail at it. See the difference these small and simple changes can make. See how that goes, just make the commitment to have a go,” she said to herself as she wheeled her bike back through the gate that led to her staircase. Kylie parked her bike against the stairs and took her wheelie bin out to the kerb ready for collection the next morning.
She carried her bike upstairs and wheeled it over to rest against the linen cupboard then she put the bourbon soaked mat and her pyjamas into the washing machine with some washing liquid. Undressing at the washing machine, she threw her clothes straight into the barrel. On removing her Lycra shorts she felt something sticky. Unable to see what it was, she walked to her bedroom mirror and turned around to see a flattened smiley face.
“Bum Face!” she said happily, putting her hands up to her mouth as she flashed back to the previous night’s comical conversation with her rear.
“Wow. That was a m-ASS-ive effort you put in today. I’m proud of you!”
“Thanks Bum Face. But you gave me the kick start I needed this morning so it was a team effort,” Kylie replied.
“And I’ll continue to do so. You’ll turn from Nottie to Hottie in no time!”
“Sounds good. Well these duds need a wash so I’m going to have to deface you.”
“Mm-kay.”
Kylie removed her Lycra bike pants and peeled off the sticky tape face. As she slipped off her underpants she felt a very pronounced welt that seemed to take up half a cheek, on both sides of her bottom. “What the?” she said turning her head around to the mirror and giving herself an atomic wedgie so she could see both welt marks clearly.
“Cor! That looks like the fricken Millennium Falcon cockpit! How did that get there?” she said in total awe. Grabbing her handbag from beside her bed, she rustled through it to find her camera and her mobile phone. She took photos of each cheek separately on her phone and then again with her camera, plus full shots from the reflection of the mirror. None of the footage was gratuitous, it was only skin. Although both cheeks were sore, she was in awe of her new bum prints and couldn’t believe the image that had presented itself on her behind, having been a life-long Star Wars fan.
After ditching the rest of her clothes, she walked naked to the bathroom. Opening the shower door, she nudged an overturned bottle of shampoo away from the middle of the shower with her foot. This action exposed the shower drain. Kylie paused, and stared. The source of the imprints on her gluteous maximus was now clear – they were an exact replica of each half of the shower drain.
“Holy shit. I must have planted myself on that last night in my drunken stupor, talk about using the force!” she said out loud. “Wow, I need to quit drinking alone.”
Kylie turned on the shower, closed the door and gently washed her body. She remained standing the entire time and even made sure her feet didn’t touch the drain. After all, she had been branded enough for one weekend.
Dried and dressed, Kylie looked in her fridge for something that had some nutritional value. She grabbed the eggs and a tomato then opened the freezer and found her vegetarian-friendly soy-based Not Bacon. She poached some eggs and cooked the Not Bacon and the tomato in a frypan and once cooked, decorated her plate making a smiley face with all the food.
Feeling much better than when the weekend started, Kylie washed up and had an early night. She set her alarm for 6 am so she could go for another ride to Pallarenda before work the next day and start a new habit.
At 7.45 am the garbage truck collected the rubbish from all the wheelie bins in Kylie’s street. She was on her way to work just as the truck pulled up at her apartment but decided to make a U-Turn around the roundabout at Gregory Street and The Strand and take a new route to work, heading back up Gregory Street to the traffic lights at Warburton Street where she stopped for a red light. “Today is the start of my better life in Townsville,” she said to herself as she waited for a green light.
Meanwhile, back at the garbage truck, the automatic arm had miscalculated the grip on Kylie’s wheelie bin and not grabbed it as tightly as it should have, resulting in the bin being wrestled in mid air as it slipped down from the initial grab point. The top rubbish bag holding the three-piece crumpled-up Wish Lischt was flung against the top corner section of the garbage truck skip bin, loosening the tie on the bag, the three pieces of crumpled paper were forced out of the rubbish bag and caught by the stiff sea breeze coming from the Strand towards the traffic lights where Kylie waited. The list remained in its three part entirety, still crumpled but floating effortlessly with the wind and landed on the first car waiting at the traffic lights in the opposite direction of Kylie.
Still waiting at the lights, Kylie vaguely noticed a piece of rubbish in the air land on the windscreen of the car diagonally opposite her. She watched the windscreen wipers come on and some water being sprayed onto the paper, making it cling to the windscreen, before the wiper blades moved it over to the driver’s side window. An arm appeared from the now open window, grabbed the rubbish and threw it inside the car on the empty passenger side floor.
Kylie watched it all unfold and laughed. “Ha, what are the odds of that happening? That sort of thing would normally only happen to me! It’s a great day for me already!” she said feeling her luck had finally changed.
