Bonds & Bonding Pt 3

Moving right along from the last post (except to say the eye specialist is booked up until Monday so I won't have the tests done until then), my new Grumpy column is below. It's turned into a serial and it could go anywhere. I met the editors of Tsunami for the first time a few nights ago and they like the serialisation concept and are happy to go with it. For me, it's fun and I get more than the 400 words of column space I've been allocated just by doing a 'to be continued' bit at the end of each one.

Anyway, read the first one here if you feel like it, click on the image to enlarge to read the second installment, then read the new version - yet to be published - below.





Grumpy

Lee Bemrose

I look drunkenly down at my friend who is dreaming drunkenly face down into cold pizza and I think about... you know… stuff. Lots of stuff. I wobble about a bit and steady myself against the wall and I think about the importance of friendship and how the universe is this big... thing. The universe is a really big thing, perhaps as the biggest thing of all the big things. It’s awesome. Fuck – why has the biggness of the universe not struck me as so awesome before now? I force myself to stop thinking about the awesome biggness of the universe because I get that feeling again when I think too much, like my head is going to completely cave in.

I forget about the universe and think instead about friendship, which is where I think I was going with the universe thing anyway. Something to do with the impotence of friendship... or maybe the importance of friendship, and how my sleepy friend with the tiniest pair of panties I’ve ever seen traveled through time and the universe and from the other side of planet Earth to be here with me and make me laugh so much and all of the moments of her life have lead her to here and now, dreaming of things while her face is mooshed sleepily into cold pizza. It’s a beautiful thing, a friendship like that.

I know, I think, I should take a photo. Kodak moment. Shit like that.

About two seconds later I realise that right now I couldn’t work a camera any more than I could drive a space shuttle. Besides, what kind of friend would take a photo of their best mate in such undignified circumstances? I am nothing if not a loyal friend and a fuck-load of a gentleman. In fact the very thought that I thought of taking a photo appalls me so much that I take another swig of beer as punishment.

No seriously, I tell myself, I have to do what a grown up would do. I have to get my friend up onto the couch and tenderly not think about how cute she is... nononono tenderly place a blanket over her and not think about panties... for fuck sake they really are little.

Somehow I coordinate the big clumsy meat machine that is me and use a fingertip to poke Best Mate in the side of the head, hoping she will wake and do the getting onto the couch bit herself. She stirs and says something about a naughty choirboy, which makes me giggle dribblingly.

I think about dignity and chivalry and I lift my unconscious friend onto the couch. I do indeed fetch a spare blanket from the closet and I place it over her in a tender way. She snuggles into the blanket and looks adorable... once I remove the slice of Italian sausage stuck to her face and take the pizza crust from her mouth.

I turn to switch off the light but am suddenly struck with a brilliant idea. Hide the pants! Fucking excellent! I’ll hide her jeans! Oh God I crack me up.

I hide my friend’s jeans in a very secret place and switch off the light.

To be continued.