The Yoga would help if there was more time for it

It’s a cold Tasmanian night. It’s a long night, drawn out, protracted, dark, the faintest disturbance encroaching on his suburban middle class slumber. A clock bought long ago in the safest of suburban middle class stores from the most plain and unremarkable counter staff crew member provides the room with its lights. The clock is covered in faint wisps of dust – like a lot of things, he’d update the clock, but he’d do it tomorrow. The room is otherwise unadorned. He has kept his room plain and devoid of memories. He has never been blokey, so he has not made fabulous adornments to his room. He never watched all those blokey shows with Cam and Durie when they were popular and he wasn’t going to start now. He promised to paint it, but he promised many things in his life. Not all of them were physical actions. He hasn’t slept well lately, his mind a labyrinth of confused thoughts, 1/2lf formed faces and recollections. He used to talk himself to sleep by imagining a much better life, sometimes he was on Parkinson swapping an anecdote, other times he was a lottery winner...

He had come from the most unremarkable of middle class backgrounds. His mother had treasured a life devoid of scandal. She hated being noticed, loathed it, and avoided it at all times. She never collected any mementos of a life best described as solid. Dependable. Never nae bother fae her. It bothered her on her visits the amount of clutter that had crept into his life. Piles of un-read books, DVDs with long forgotten stars on the cover – who was Rebecca De Mornay anyway? He had protested, in a friendly way, that accoutrements in his life had been earned. He pointed to his cousin and his folly of a marriage. Look at them he had said in a sneery voice. Kids! BBQs to pretend they got along with the in laws! Why would anyone even BE in a relationship he had said! He, he had said, got to spend his money on himself. He would then hold up a trinket of some sort and say how much it has cost. Plays X-Box all day long, never has to go on a furniture buying expedition. Oh how he hates people doing nice things on the weekend like driving in the country or shopping for drapes. How proud. How true to himself...

And now...this...it made a mockery and nonsense of everything else...he just hadn’t realised it yet...

She sits on the edge of his bed. She looks beautiful, even unmade, even with her traumas - he looks a curled up, crumpled mess. She’s wearing his T-shirt, 1ne of those Xmas presents aunties who know nothing about you buy you – it had wrestlers on it, and a jagged pointed black star that looked like it would come off the fabric and take a child’s eye out, but she makes it work. She could make anything work. He’s sleeping, but she’s stirring him, she’s stroking his leg. He opens 1ne sleepy, tired eye, fixating in his eyeline on a red sharply cornered number on the digital clock. He presses his fist deep into his sheet, adjusts, feels the rubbing of his ankle, and stirs gently. Time stands still in his brain. He had slept unusually well...

Realisation to hit in 3...2...1...

His gums ache, his brain is devoid of its usual intense thought patterns. She’s smiling at him as he sits upright, his lazy left eye unable to fully open. There’s a cold stillness in the air. Such problems, such discourse that lead to this point, so many tears and anguish. Well here it was kiddo, time to wake and face it. As soon as his brain engages in any kind of discourse with itself – and it always has, it’s always chattered to itself, always been on high maintenance catholic guilt FM – you’ll know what you did. It’ll come soon – look to your left, cigarettes by the bedside. Not like you smoke is it? There’s a cramp in his leg, a deep intense ache, that makes him sit bolt upright. He’s done it a million times. In fact, when he was younger, he found he could give himself cramp. And as his face is illuminated by the thundering passing lights of a Toyota Camry, there she is. Still smiling, still more mature than you. Oh you’ve read a thousand more books than her, know more about the completed works of Proust, talked that girl at uni into bed talking about Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but guess what...you can’t talk your way out of this one. Time to sit up...be a big boy...

Welcome to the future kid – you’re going to love it.

“Hey”...oh good start. That’s your first words. This has taken 6ix months and that’s your first words at this moment in your life. “Hey” – what’s next? A handshake? And you’ve said it in such a limp, flat way. Sure, rub your eyes, that’ll make up for it. I guess you can be forgiven – it’s been a stressful day. How did we start this anyway...we didn’t know each other 6ix months ago...then via the exchange of Facebook messages and drinking vodka shots in the living room while George and Mildred bickered on television in the background she’d come to depend on your company. You didn’t even see it...

She’s got kids...1ne of them is going to hate you...

So your life got more complicated than simply deciding it was going to be a Lily Allen day or a Smoosh day on the car stereo? So you made another friend? So her husband kicked her out and then she came and stayed in your spare room? You didn’t see it...you thought you were being nice. Sure you’d flirted with each other at karaoke and the people at Montgomery’s gave you both a standing ovation, so what? So what if you were txting, so what if you were there standing in the rain picking her up from the bus stop so you could see a movie...

...one of her kids is deaf. Stone deaf. How do you even begin....

“Hey you!” – She’s smiling, speaking with genuine affection. You’re out of your depth now aren’t you? She looks incredible, smiling, so sweetly, so amazing. She’s relying on you now. You smile a thin wan smile and try your best to focus. And in the all the time it’s taken to gather all these thoughts, all these particles of your life and assemble them into a thread of coherence, the last digit on your digital clock has progressed no further than moving from 3hree to 5ive...

Start with breakfast...it’ll be easier after breakfast...

There’s nothing in my house. Orange juice, and 1ne of those little multi packets of different kinds of cereal you take on camping trips. I was meaning to go to the grocery store, I really was – I just got distracted. Distracted by the ephemeral trivia that distracts a single man – episodes of the Simpsons, and Xbox games of Smackdown vs. Raw. The controller was still lying on the floor when she came to the door. She’s left her life behind, and all I can offer is Nutri Grain and 17teen different types of yawning. If we were going camping in Grade 8ight, I could be of some use. I have a pocket knife in the bottom drawer. Why is that important? There’s coffee, at least there’s coffee....focus your brain child...

“So...” she says. The smile hasn’t left her face. She sits down at my table and puts her legs either side of the wooden stool at my breakfast table. She flicks through the liner notes on 1ne of my CDs and sets it aside. I still haven’t said anything profound all morning. In fact, since “hey”, I haven’t really said anything at all. I’ve mostly stirred my Nutri Grain and poured honey onto it. Little bits of Nutri Grain are drowning under the weight of a honeyed frenzy. She’s tucking into a tiny packet of Corn Flakes I’ve salvaged from the wreck of my cupboard. It was either that or we tried to create a dish made out of salt and foil.

She takes my hand waiting for some affirmation. I shrug meekly. “So...”

Just like I did when you said you loved me right...yeah, I’m doing well so far...sure, I’m an improvement on the violence, but I promised more than apathy...

She throws back her head and laughs. “Fuken hell, how did THIS happen!”...don’t get on me, that’s how she says it. No C. That’s how she spelt it in her messages....

I take a sip of coffee that nearly scalds my mouth. I rub my hair so vigorously it’s almost an assault. For the first time all morning I smile. “Geez I love you...”

There. You said it. You own the sentiment now, it’s out there, given to you as a gift. Now, about your kids....

“So tell me about you!” she says, taking a spoonful of my cereal and devouring it in a messy way. We’re together and she knows nothing about me. And it’s ME she wants to know about. Not my love of Smoosh, not when I got my print of the 1990ty Collingwood Premiership team...me...

I hate talking about myself. Ironic for a writer, especially a poor 1ne. Writer? What have you written? Your Dad still hates you for not entering the Going Live! Competition to become a sports writer. How could you lose to a nerdy girl with thick Jo Pa glasses who wrote about cricket. You, you failure...how to sum up a lifetime of 1/2lf attempts, of moments past in the blink of an eye. Where to start? I’ve sat too many nights like a country and western singer in desperate, stomach twisting moments of regret. I devour popular culture but nothing of meaning. I lost my virginity to a girl who chatted me up at uni by singing Sex and Candy to me in class. I can remember the band that sang Sex and Candy – Marcy’s Playground. Their album was self titled. And yet I can’t remember her name for the life of me. You want to know about me – that’s about as telling an anecdote as can be found. I lacerate myself mentally far too much. I take sports defeats personally....

I’ll never leave you. Just say that. You know it’s for keeps now. It’s a nice sentiment...very Xmas card...

“Not much to tell,” is what I really say. “Just an ordinary guy really!”
It’s faintly self deprecating. Scottish people don’t have egos to trumpet. If we did, this bit would be easier...

“Fine!” she says, with a hint of impatience creeping across her unmade face. She folds her arms, and for a moment stares into her cereal until emerging from the milky brine with a thought, an idea, something that may pass the time until morning, until we emerge into our workplace with something tangible to tell the office gossips...

“Tell me you big idiot about your greatest ever fuck up!”

How to choose...how to choose...I’m Scottish...there’s so many choices...



I had approached my university studies with an abhorrent and careless disregard. My entire uni life was like I had been given a beautiful gift and played with the box. It was no surprise on the day of reckoning that I drove to the university to get my results, flipped open the giant ring binder with everyone’s fate trapped inside it, turned to find my name and saw next to my name 2wo numbers which would be high if they were listed temperatures for a Burnie summers day, but which as university marks put me somewhere alongside that kid who spent an entire semester trying to work out if he had ticks in his brain and got expelled for throwing paint at a feminist rally. I know – I looked him up. I had spent 2wo years taking every conceivable short cut. Sometimes in the computer lab at night, I would be at 1ne end and a pervert pleasuring himself to the new found delights of Internet porn would be up the other. I know he did, because the cleaner would always call him a “filthy fecker”...

I walked into an English exam armed only with the knowledge of the books back cover blurb which I read 3 seconds before the exam. I passed the exam mostly by repeated use of the phrase sui generis on every page. I missed another exam because I was talking to my cousin online and lost track of time. 1ne invented dead relative later, and it was rescheduled post haste. I thought I could play clever little games with the system forever...but I couldn’t....I was out, on the scrapheap, a failure. Bombed out...no where to run...

The pay phone I rang from was chocolate brown, and had gum in the receiver. My coins clanked in the slot – clanking with the weight of a life of regret. They answered straight away. It amused me a little to think they had a cake ready to celebrate. Fools. I still to my surprise didn’t feel anything yet. I spoke my words with indifference. My Mum was so disappointed. She sighed. The sigh of the malcontent. My Dad was angry. He had tried to be a doctor but failed and had spent many a draconian winter hovering over me like a thundering televangelist. Apathy is the path to office life he would say, as he threw his bag or satchel down. I didn’t listen. He spent 4our years...4our fucking years...traipsing around Ayrshire schools being told he had just missed out on jobs. 1nce ½ the panel liked him, ½ had liked some other bloke, so they gave the job to candidate 3hree that no-1ne liked...hadn’t I learned to become 1ne of those poor bastards controlled by interviews, he thundered, and I had followed in his foot-steps. It wasn’t the time for me to sing Cats in the Cradle down the phone line, but I hung up as soon as I could. I knew at home they would be ringing the relatives. Back in Scotland...

“My James is studying law...oh my Billy is going to have a corporate box at Manchester United...what’s your boy doing...oh...OH....”

I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t go home and face their disappointment. All I wanted was 5ive minutes to clear my head. I didn’t go home for 2wo whole days. I wandered around like a tramp for a while. The 1st night I slept in a corridor at uni. Irony – the most time I ever spent there in 1ne sitting. It was horrifically, apocalyptically cold. It burned and tormented every part of my homeless body. I fell asleep in awful fits and starts. Eventually a security guard and some swotty girl with horn rimmed glasses woke me up. They didn’t see me, they just disturbed me. I wandered around Hobart in only a yellow Liverpool away top for a whole day. I can’t remember how I ate, but I did. There was only so many times I could hang around Sanity and leaf through Catatonia albums before they moved me on...

Phone calls at home...

“No I haven’t seen him...why? Oh...OH....”

I wish I hadn’t been so selfish. I could at least have rung home. But not yet...night 2wo...chased out of every shop in Hobart, and unable to face the cold again, I broke into my girlfriend’s house through the window. She was kinda squatting anyway, so I’m not sure if it counts as breaking in. Before she got her house, the 1ne with the ATARI console in the attic that I wasted a whole year and an entire relationship playing, she had been part of a pay and stay sort of share house that people could dip in and out of. Very dodgy the system, but it worked for her. I say girlfriend in the sense that we had slept together, that we hated each other because we argued about art all night long, and then we wouldn’t see each other for elongated stretches. And I say dodgy, I mean illegal. Napster had nothing on this pay and stay system. Some1ne at uni had got very rich on this flat...

“Hello...hospital...please...can you check again....OK...sorry...”

I can’t remember taking the drugs. They were just there. That’s the most important thing. I know I did, because I know the consequences. I know as I huddled down to try and sleep people piled into the house – there was no middle ground in that house, you either huddled alone or drunk in a crowd, no in between - including my girlfriend, and we’d had an argument about art, as we always did. I know we drank many bottles of wine, and the whole thing was a distinctly murky blur of over pretentious conversation and hinted violence. I remember the consequences. Utter, complete and total blackness. Any time I tried to think, there was nothing. Any time I tried to move, there was nothing, except the faint feeling that my blood was cracking, creaking and boiling. Any time I tried to breathe, nothing came out. Any time I tried to get up, I felt lifeless and listless...in truth, such was my hatred of myself for failing that if I had never moved, just died in a black abyss of self loathing on a carpet stained with dog prints and bottle caps, at that time, I would have been very happy. It was so disgustingly immature and self indulgent...I thought I was an artist suffering, some sort of above it all tortured soul ending it all in a flourish. Truthfully I was just some guy who didn’t work hard enough at learning to draw...

Waking up from that blackness was horrendously hard. I had to physically make myself wake up, get up, go outside...find a bus, find the money to pay for the bus...and go home...

I faced it all in the end – a horrible Xmas sitting around with my cousin and his girlfriend just being better than me, a long Penguin Xmas in a crappy shack with people I hated, hearing about how well everyone was doing, especially the local footballer who had SUCH a great season...a long lecture on the couch, a horrendous series of job interviews...but I never told them I had made such an attempt on my existence. Never told anyone...never let it slip. Just told Mum about sleeping in the art room corridor and how cold it was....they never brought it up again. I wish sometimes I could just open up my entire life to my Mum and Dad. But they don’t want the hassle. They don’t want the disturbance. It would get in the way of The Bill...

“And having survived, I went on to have great friends, went on to a life of Hobart pubs, of winning meat trays...and so on and so on...to you...”

But I fucked it up. And I hate it...and like a country and western singer in a shitty Tasmanian tavern spouting words of regret to no 1ne in particular, I can’t go back and fix it...

I hope it’s a conversational flourish that will take some of the edge off the first real story about me. How I was and how I came to be. It’s all the depth I can muster at this time of the morning...

She looks at me oddly. She was clearly expecting some amusing anecdote about the time I broke my toe playing soccer in the corridor. She awkwardly stirs her coffee and shifts uncomfortably. I think for a moment, a moment in the morning air that hangs and just sits there, that she hasn’t listened to a word I’ve said...

Great, I think, as I spit my dying wish, you’re listening to something else...

“That’s pretty fucked up eh...”

We’re not going to have erudite breakfast conversation I guess

Great – he thinks I’m stupid...I can see it in his face...first it was because I liked The Script, and now this...

The illuminated perky faces of breakfast television presenters give us something else to look at eventually. They make conversation easy. They never pause, never stumble. Throw in an autocue malfunction and they deal. Satellite breaks down – they deal. I look at them carefully over her shoulder. When I look in the opposite direction her bag is parked at the door. It’s not much to look it – just an ADIDAS hold all, with a handle frayed at the edge. Her accumulated possessions. All she could muster in the 5ive minutes it took her to get out of the house while he was sleeping. He’ll come for you, you know that. You can be strong. It’ll be confrontational. You can get through it...

You won’t get through it. You can’t take a punch to save yourself. That kid kicked you in the shopping mall, right in the shins, and you nearly sooked it up a treat.

She smiles again gently, turns off the TV, straightens his tie and says “you ready”...

He smiles gently, equally gently.

Born ready...

And so, she thinks, I hope I haven’t fucked this up...