There are just some things that just aren't meant to be.
For instance, I have always harboured a secret desire to own a full length leather coat.
Unfortunately I know from a brief heartbreaking experiment that full length leather coats make me look like Silent Bob. I am short and not quite slender enough to pull it off and end up looking like I should be kneecapping people or something.
It was probably because of the whole 'sharehouse summer' thing.
After I was kicked out of my Uni sharehouse for not scrubbing my 'assigned sections' of the house to satisfaction or being sufficiently interested in The War and the glory of Australia, I spent every night of a month getting drunk on red wine and watching either Underworld or Under the Tuscan Sun. Odd selection I know but for some reason I kept getting drawn back to those two; the over emotional sentimentality of Diane Lane versus the almost emotionlessness of Kate Beckinsale. Go figure. For all I know it's because they both start with 'U' and once I'd started slouching about in a maudlin manner I couldn't be bothered to look any further up the DVD tower than that.
By day I would brave the stifling heat and tramp into Carlton to check the window at Readings for sharehouse ads, take down numbers and make calls to organise an interview, just trying to find a new place that was close enough, didn't do 'communal meals' and which wouldn't be owned by crazy 50+ year old eternal students who could sneak a judgemental comment into the answer to 'would you like a cup of tea?'
By night I would cook meals that were almost always smothered in cheese and then basically stick a straw into a bottle of Cab Sav and watch vampires punch werewolves or Americans discover the healing power of having sex with foreign people.
That's probably where the leather jacket fixation really took hold. That and I got a Kate Beckinsale 'Selene' haircut and very quickly realised that that wasn't going to work either. Those 'just got out of the shower' locks don't maintain themselves, you have to keep having showers or gel up like a fourteen year old boy who has just discovered product, both of which I am far too lazy to do.
I would have done better to have bonked an Italian guy and adopted an illegal Polish immigrant ala Under the Tuscan Sun.
I was doing all this at my uncle's house whilst he and my cousins were - with impeccable timing - out of town on holidays so I had plenty of time to realise that I had no idea where they kept anything, be mistaken for a burglar by an elderly neighbour and start to get worked up about how none of the people whose crappy houses I was willing to pay to share were calling me back.
I saw some places that were small and kind of dodgy, places that were big and kind of dodgy, places that were a confusing hopscotch of train, tram and bus rides from town, places that were a backstreet away from a main street and met a lot of strange people. There were the ex-students, current students, big old hippies, young professionals, kids whose parents were still paying their rent or who had actually bought the house they were living in.
By the time someone actually called me back to ask if I was still interested I'd forgotten who they were and just said yes because I was running out of time and wanted to move into a place where I knew where the utensils were kept and didn't have to keep catching glimpses of my grandmother's photo giving me disapproving looks when I had to drag myself up the staircase via the bannister.
Once I shuffled through my notebook of phone numbers and addresses I remembered. It was the sharehouse where, when I turned up, they were all laying on a mattress in the lounge room watching Bad Santa while Bruce the ridgeback watched me and I did my best not to ogle the centrefold pin ups decorating the walls.
Considering my ink count is exactly zero and everyone else living there was tattooed almost from one side to the other I figured I would spend most of my time there hiding in my room and trying not to be eaten by Bruce.
Two nights in I was slouching around with them on the mattress watching The Mighty Boosh whilst my new housemates herbalised the air and Bruce the ridgeback tried to curl up on my feet like a puppy.
A month later the 'Selene' hair do had grown out, the only other girl and I were alternating weird hair dye selections every other week and no one ever complained about the standard of my cleaning techniques.
Nice :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment