TGF

GRUMPY

Lying in bed wondering what the next Grumpy column is going to be about. It's late at night and I'm shagged after a two week road trip down to Rainbow Serpent and back. Surely something happened in that four day orgy of dancing and silliness that will do, but so far nothing has TGF (aka, The Grumpy Factor). My mind is kind of whooshing and wobbling deliriously. Dogs? Done it. Bra Pee? Done it. Farts and orgasms? Did it twice, and two columns out of that one unfortunate incident was already pushing TGF to the max. What the hell am I going to write about?

The phone rings. It's bedside waiting for 4.30am to play its role as my alarm. First day back at work in a few short hours. I look at the phone. Kid sister who's extended her road trip from Victoria to Queensland, currently around the Byron area. It's so late it could be important. I take the phone out into the loungeroom so as not to wake the girlfriend. What follows is a conversation spoken in hushed tones on both ends. Seems kid sis and her boy were doing some late night Nimbin-type business and things got a bit tense. She didn't want to elaborate on the phone but some guy in the street they were making a purchase from (I don't know – fruit and veg or something?) got a little jittery and that made them jittery. They scarpered out of town quick smart in their rental car and were currently trying to sleep in the car on a little suburban laneway. They were both quietly freaking out a little bit. I'm sure she used the phrase “zombie hillbilly hippies”, which is not a phrase you tend to hear all that often these days. Currently the boyfriend – having had enough of trying to sleep inside the car – was cocooned in his sleeping bag on the laneway's grassy verge while she sat inside the locked car keeping a watch-out for the aforementioned zombie hibillly hippies. The murmured conversation came to a halt with a scream when he scared the shit out of her by tapping on the window and asking from the depths of his hooded sleeping bag if he could get back inside the car please because ground creatures appeared to be crawling all over him. Either there really were ground creatures crawling over him or they sold very interesting fruit and veg in Nimbin.

I go back to bed. I try not to think about the fact that I only have about four hours before I have to get up. I also try not to think about zommbie hillbilly hippies.

Pretty soon the security door gives a brief burst of it's unique hellish buzz. It's not the kind of buzz a real visitor with intentions of actual visting uses. Too brief. A mistake, I hope optimistically. I close my eyes. The buzzer goes again. Half a second of buzz, no more. Then another, slightly longer one. Is someone Morse coding on my buzzer on the wrong side of midnight? The fuck is going on?

The buzzing gets braver. More insistent. I have three friends staying at the moment, so even my fatigued brain figures out that someone went out tonight and...

“So sorry – left the keys in my other bag...”

I let the two of them in. I tell them they are fucking idiots and give them goodnight hugs. I go to the bathroom and sit down on the loo, grinding my knuckles into my eyes. I hear a key go into the front door and figure guest number three has just arrived home, which is fine. A short time later the bathroom door swings wide open and guest number three walks fully into the white glare of the bathroom, me seated with my track pants around my ankles, which is not so fine. We are good friends but this is definitely entering unchartered waters of the friendship.

“Oh,” she says. “Hello. Didn't expect to see you in here.”

“Hello. I was just thinking the same thing. Do you need to use the, erm...”

“Not urgently.”

“I won't be long. And it's all right – I'm not doing number twos.”

“No? What are you doing then?”

“Not that either. That would be really awkward. I'm just doing a wee.”

“Really? You sit down to wee?”

“Not normally, but I just thought that with it being this late at night and me sharing the house with four women it would be wise for me to not run the risk of leaving the seat up. And actually, as it turns out, it's quite an ergonomical way of doing things. Quite comfy.”

“That's really considerate of you,” she smiles at me.

“Yes... and do you think we should finish this conversation outside?”

“Oh. Yes. Sorry.”

I make it back to bed but not quite to sleep, tormented for the few short hours I have left that absolutely nothing, it seems, has TGF at the moment.

Grumpy is Lee Bemrose, freelance writer. Contact him at twobluefish@bigpond.com