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forest at night

THIS STORY IS DEDICATED TO A MAN IN A COMA

Some time ago Christie’s step brother fell into a coma. Apparently he was having sex with his wife, and apparently all of a sudden he closed his eyes and didn’t open them again. Everyone prayed for him, and the next day, in hospital, he opened his eyes and acted as though nothing had ever happened. It’s a miracle! we exclaimed, …

YOU NEED MORE MONEY

Sometimes I see the earth as this tiny marble occupied by these even tinier dots called people, and all these people are looking up at a giant sun made of money, and they’re all bowing to it, talking about it night and day, thinking about it night and day, and when they’re not talking or thinking about money night and …

SOMETHING IN YOUR STOMACH

Someone from work once gave me a moleskin, and for some time I just let it sit at the back of my car. “If you don’t want to write in it, why don’t you draw something in it?” Christie asked me from her hospital bed. “Yeah okay,” I complained. “Like drawing is so fucking easy.” She got mad, so I …

HOPES AND FEARS FOR 2016

Carol took a sip of her drink. “My only wish is that I find good music this year. I mean the music in two thousand fifteen was great, and like, I really got into Spotify and Pandora and that, but like, I mean, The Weeknd’s album was pretty good, but really, I wanted more, you know? Do you ever get …

PART 6: GOING HOME

There are some days when I have great dreams and there are some days when I have no dreams at all. Once, when I was a kid, I lay in bed, fantasising about becoming a magician. I thought about how I was going to become the greatest magician in the world and how much sex I was going to get …

PART 5: THE TRUTH ABOUT CHEATERS

This year has been all about cheating. I cheated, I helped people cheat, my friends cheated, I was even cheated on for a while. Funnily enough, there was a brief period of time when the loads of cheating seemed abnormal – immoral, even – but the more it absorbed me this year the more it seemed like a natural, expected …

ANAL

Things I liked out about Anna: she loved The Weeknd, she loved mixing music and had a following online, she brought Surface Children with her wherever she went, she regularly bought her parents dinner. Things that annoyed me: she secretly loved chaos, she loved destruction, she enjoyed the drama in walking away from the flames. I walked out of work …

PAIN

The pain began a couple of weeks after Mandy and I broke up. It was a pain that was completely middle class and it was a pain that I was familiar with and it was a pain that pissed me off. She gave me back everything that I’d given her, and I deleted her number and completely cut her off. …

ENDING IT WITH MANDY

Mandy and I had a fight right after coming home from one of my book signings. She yelled and I yelled but to be honest, none of the things that came out of our mouths were actually new. We fought about what we always fought about: money. We (she) decided then and there to end it, and I walked over …

KNIFE FIGHT WITH A GIRLFRIEND

Mandy was kicked out of home when she was twenty-two years old by both of her parents because they hated the fact that she was dating someone from China. Although her relationship with her then boyfriend never panned out, her relationship with her parents was never the same again, and I knew this because we’d spend hours of our evenings, …

THE BIG BAD EASTER BUNNY

This was the first Easter Sunday where I woke up not knowing how I got to where I was. I woke up in a café in the Valley or New Farm or West End or something and Jude was there, and so was his girl, and so was some other girl, and all they did was laugh at me. We …

THERE IS NO TIME FOR GRIEF

I hadn’t slept in two days. I got to work at ten in the morning, drove home at about three in the afternoon. I drove to Vail’s home, parked on her driveway. I watched her house for a while before giving her a call. No one answered her phone, so I called the receptionist. “Hello?” “Hi.” “Dean?” “Who else would …

EVERYTHING ALWAYS ENDS UP IN YOUR BATHROOM

Life has been stupid lately. I was hired by the luxury car dealership to be their copywriter/designer/marketing person/driver, and as I happily accepted their offer and happily accepted their stable pay slips everything else outside my working life began to deteriorate: I wrote less, I saw friends less, I boxed less, I woke up at five in the morning every …

JUDE AND ARIEL IN MY DREAM

There’s a rumour that’s going on about the world. That it’s ending. That food is running out, that resources are running out. There’s a rumour that the government, which is more than happy to spy on people but begins arresting them if anyone reveals any of its secrets, will one day control every single thing, even our thoughts, if they …

A POINTLESS THEORY ABOUT LOVE

Things weren’t going so well for Ariel and I so she flew us both to Melbourne for two days. We caught the SkyBus to our hotel and checked in and when we dropped our bags on the carpet we looked at each other and laughed for no reason; she said she was tired, but the day was never coming back …

HOW TO WRITE A BOOK AND NOT GET PUBLISHED

When I remember myself and when I remember my life it will all be portrayed in black and white. It won’t be in HD or 3D and it’ll be lower than low budget; the screen quality will be a little fuzzy and sometimes you’ll have to bang the screen to see it properly. A lot of the scenes, the scenes …

HER FACE WAS DRAWN WITH CHARCOAL

I want a lot of things. I want a big black car. I want a bunch of money. I want to feel postmodern, relevant, sleepy. I want to eat the stuff that makes the clouds. I want to fuck the moonlight. I want to forget a whole lot of things. But there are also a few bits and pieces of …

ARIEL’S AUNTIE

I wonder what it’d be like to be popular. Are popular people happy? How long do they spend on the phone? How much do they spend on birthday presents? How many friends do they have on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and Vine and whatever the hell else is out there? As I approach my late twenties I’ve come to …

THE PIMP I’LL NEVER SEE

Ariel was a lot of things. She was smart and she was ambitious and she was the most jealous person I’d ever met. “I know this is unfair, but if I see you with a girlfriend I will shove my fist down her throat and kill her.” Some part of me actually wanted to see it happen. When we first …

PART TWO.

Time is something you don’t necessarily have to hold on to. I don’t know why, but that evening, last year, when you walked out of the third party we’d been to that week with your stupid friends who didn’t understand us – who didn’t understand me – I couldn’t help but feel hollow – is hollow a feeling? I know …

LASER EYE LONELINESS

I had this dream once of becoming a successful writer. I’d be smoking a cigarette on top of a pile of money and every day, I’d buy some girl with nice legs a brand new car. Everyone would buy my books: lonely people would buy my books, the downtrodden would buy my books, bored middle-aged housewives would buy my books, …

ONLINE DATING

I’d always been suspicious of online dating. To me, online dating was one of those things you secretly did when you’ve completely run out of people to try and impress. Sort of like the first school dance you go to, when you go in expecting you can get anyone you want. When you realise you can’t, you start to lower …

THERE’S ALWAYS SOMEONE COOLER THAN YOU

There’s this family friend of mine who has always been better than me. We’re the same age but he’s taller, better looking, more athletic, more successful. He was always the one who easily found a job; he was always the one with cooler looking friends and even better looking girlfriends. I sort of stopped talking to him when we were …

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU’VE LOST YOUR JOB

I’d lost the girl and I’d lost the job. What was next? I started the next morning with a throbbing head; I drank four glasses of water, brushed my teeth, changed my shirt and drove across the universe to reach a McDonald’s. I ordered a McChicken and sat in a quiet spot with nobody around and texted people, asking them …

BAD NEWS AFTER THE MELBOURNE CUP

In the morning my manager called me into the boardroom. I was about to tell him some joke about the other day when I noticed that the company’s legal advisor was sitting there with him, looking at me with a strange sombre expression on his face. “Listen,” my manager said. “You’ve been really valuable to us these past few months, …