Bonds & Bonding

Ooh I am getting into this 'To Be Continued ' stuff, aren't I. Wonder if I can get out of it.

Here is a slightly different version of my Grumpy column which goes to print in Tsunami shortly.



Grumpy

Lee Bemrose

So we get home after another drinking session, my best mate and me. We’re monstered. We have totally wobilised ourselves. We are dribblingly incoherent but have somehow made it back home where we can properly swear and laugh and carry on like a couple of idiots. We have somehow acquired pizza, which is a good thing. Fuck knows who paid for it. Fuck knows what flavour it is. But it’s all good.

Girlfriend is asleep so we pretend we are being quiet for a bit. We pretend that crashing bottles and bumpy walls and slamming doors are easily slept-through. “Shhhh!” we tell each other a lot as we fall about, clinging to the walls. I have no idea what it is that we are laughing about, but it’s obviously pretty damned funny.

It’s all good, I tell myself. Mates do this kind of shit all the time and the girlfriend is fine. She’ll be pissy if we, I dunno, if I pee in the kitty litter box again or anything like that, but it should be all right. One more beer and finish the pizza and off to bed.

Suddenly my mate lets out a shriek indicating that an unforgivable injustice has just taken place. It’s a tiny little rip in her jeans (did I mention my best mate is a chick? Maybe not. Maybe this is why things go pear-shaped).

“Whassup?” I ask.

“Rrrrip,” she explains, pointing at her denim-clad thigh with its miniscule rip. “Oh fuck me look at that.”

“Oh well,” I wittily retort, re-focusing my unfocused eyes on the pizza.

I am so drunk by this time that I’m not even sure what my real name is, so when Best Mate decides that the solution to her wardrobe malfunction is to remove her jeans and finish eating her pizza in the tiniest little pair of panties I’ve ever tried so hard to not look at, I just kind of shrug and go yeah, cool, whatever.

But then I’m kind of thinking maybe I should even things up and take off my own jeans and finish eating our pizza in my undies or something. Because, you know maybe drinking beer and eating pizza in your undies with your best mate is what all the cool people are doing.

I spend the next few minutes trying to recall whether I put on a cool pair of undies this morning or a daggy pair. It just about does my head in because although I have a couple of really cool undies I’d be proud eat pizza in with my closest friends, there are a couple of shockers I know I would never live down.

My mental undies crisis ends when Best Mate slowly leans forward and goes face down totally unconscious into the pizza, leaving me torn between getting the hell out of there and leaving her to fend for herself, and taking off my pants and passing out in the pizza because maybe this will bring us even closer together.

To be continued.