I used to believe that the world was full of clichés. Most people I see at university or even out clubbing fit a particular mould that has been driven into our minds by the global media. Such recognisable characters include a guy with glasses, a turtle neck sweater and an apple mac – no prizes for guessing the personality characteristics of this fucktard. Another is a short, bulky guy with a tight shirt dancing along to ‘Gimmie More’ (a rather intricate track featuring such proficient song lyrics as if they were plagiarised straight from the great Bob Dylan himself – “It’s Britney, bitch” being the highlight). Here is a girl with straightened blonde hair brushed over one side of her face, sort of a half fringe with an eye so black with mascara, that you probably could have mistaken it for a black eye. These are just examples of these common ‘beautiful people,’ characters seamlessly ripped straight from the script of a teen comedy and though I still believe in these clichés, there is one more character template to add to the list.
On the exterior, I can come across as a bit of a cocky prick. That’s because I felt as if I had reached this curtain elevated state of enlightenment that not too many people have ever experienced. It was if I lay huddled in a dark room, like a hermit, and someone opened a massive window and then shone floodlights through them. I felt as if, for the first time in my life, I had things sussed and that I had some sort of understanding of the inner workings of the world. This wasn’t something I always felt I had. It only really came over me in 2007 when things actually started going right and from this I was able to turn my life around. I must admit, it was going well. A little too well and I definitely had myself fooled there into thinking everything was going to last. But of course, what goes up, must come down. Even through all of this, I never even considered myself as a clichéd character like the few I mentioned above. I always felt as if I was much more complex and driven by morals I kept close to my heart for as long as I remember – overanalysed to avoid cognitive dissonance – and this made me something more than a lot of other people. But on further inspection, I guess I too fit the mould of one of these characters – only I’m directing the movie and writing the story as well.
I thought I’d do something a little different to my usual observational rants, and describe a night out on the town that I experienced. I’m hoping that everyone will at least relate to it in some ways and perhaps even see that cliché when they go out clubbing next. I hope you all enjoy it.
All week I couldn’t contain my excitement at the prospect of meeting up with some new people and perhaps finding some sort of stable moment in my life. Life for me is about stability. However, being the apathetic person I am, it needs to require the least amount of effort and emotional output as possible. Though that’s not generally always the case. When I feel relaxed with the people around me, hyped up or drunk, I’m at my most emotional. That’s not emo as in – cry face, self inflicted “stigmata” but just showing effort in body language and facial expressions during conversations. While everyone else was packing condoms into their wallets, I packed myself a crinkled daily bus ticket that I got more than my $2.90 worth out of and went on my merry way. The bus trip involved sitting at the front, listening to the deafening screams of several drunken partygoers eager to commence their night of intoxication.
So I arrived in the city with a wallet full of fifties, ready to blow my money on copious amounts of alcohol, though funnily enough, I’m not a big drinker. I queue up in the line for Fridays to have some drinks and chill before we hit the real night life that they valley beholds. Standing in the queue for entry to any club is either like being a contestant of Australia’s Next Top Model or being some farm animal on a conveyor belt slowly advancing to its unavoidable judgement day. It’s extremely prejudiced but if you follow a certain formula (or you’re a woman) then it’s as easy as taking a piss beside a waterfall. Jay Jays shirt + black jeans + black smart casual shoes = entry to most clubs in Brisbane for males. That is when there are a fair few of females inside the club. I’m still at the stage now of whether rejection from a club for males is a negative judgment or evaluation of your dress style / presentation or the bouncer is doing you a favour by not permitting entry for you in the club you spent several hours queuing up for. How could the bouncer be doing you a favour you ask? Let’s consider this scenario:
The GPO is a club I have never been to. That’s a true story. I believe I have tried several times to gain access there, seven to be exact, yet have been knocked back every single time. Now this isn’t a club I would willingly spend my time to go to – I would only ever go there now if I was to meet my friends there or I was threatened. The bouncers there, are actually among the rudest people I have ever met (yes I did say AMONG – some bus drivers are much worse – though I am still in a heated debate over this fact). However, they might just be doing me the biggest favour of my life. I recall a time where I was queued up to enter the GPO with a very knowledgeable friend of mine, and I was knocked back by the bouncer because – and it was the best excuse I have ever heard because they didn’t dick around – “there are too many guys...you can’t enter. Move along.” Immediately after we moved on, the two buff blokes wearing pink t-shirts with some stupid pattern on it were permitted entry without delay. I wouldn’t be surprised if the bouncers rolled out the red carpet for them, presented them with a nice bottle of chardonnay and then sucked them off behind the bar. I’d like to think that the bouncer was doing us a favour if the excuse was true. I don’t like entering a club full of guys. Therefore the power this bouncer has over me becomes non-existent. I don’t want to enter a club full of guys, and you pretty much said yourself that it was too full of men, seemingly giving your club a poor image that girls simply don’t want to go there. To me, the guy is simply saying “don’t come here. It’s full of guys. Now (please) move along so I can suck the dicks of the two buff blokes behind you.”
When you think about it in this new light, the rejection doesn’t seem so bad. So anyway, I got into Fridays without an issue, though my friend was just about to be denied entry because of his ratty shoes, until a fight broke out behind us, and the bouncers completely forgot about his shoes as they lay into this spiky haired body builder fellow causing the ruckus. Upon entry, we commenced the now infamous walk around the club, eyeing out potential females we could talk about chatting up at a table a safe distance away from them. Conversations at ‘the table’ followed this formula:
“That girl looks hot.”
“Yep.”
“She’s alright”
“Yeah.”
Ad infinitum.
Our eyes were getting worn out. And so were our necks from looking around. So I thought, enough of this nonsense. You have to kind of get to know how you compare to everyone else in the club. So I walked up to the bar to get the drinks. I moved out of the way for the messy blonde haired males with fluoro t-shirts so that they could pass through, the untouchables they are, and I approached the bar. I’m never really too sure what to do here. Should I lean? I kind of slightly hunch over the bar a little bit, waving a fifty dollar note like a white flag of surrender, as if I’m yielding to the fact that the slightly attractive female bartender would be the only girl to start a conversation with me on purpose tonight. Suddenly a group of girls approach the bar and they immediately fix their eyes on the television where Australia was getting slaughtered in the Rugby. They start pointing at the TV and I’m thinking that this would be the perfect opportunity to strike up a bit of conversation while I wait patiently for service (every other person around me seems to be getting served first). So this is what I say:
Me: “Atrocious game isn’t it?”
Chick: “Sorry?”
Me: “Atrocious game isn’t it?”
Chick: (puzzled look)
Me: “The rugby?”
Chick: “Oh...cool.” (turns head)
Awesome. It couldn’t have possibly gone any better. Oh well...at least when the bartender serves me, she will initiate the conversation...which in some ways counts right? ;). Once the rude girls get served, a horizontally challenged lady directs the bartender to me, in a valiant act of altruism, as I had been waiting much longer than her. I nodded a thanks to her then turned to the bartender. She looked at me and raised one eyebrow, not in the “how you doin’” seedy way, it was more along the lines of “what the fuck do you want?” Great. It’s up to me to initiate the conversation! The girl who I should have been a definite guarantee to get a conversation starter with tonight expected me to say ‘hi’ first! I asked her for a scooner of Coopers (great beer). She sighs and pours me a glass. She was a shit pourer too, I might add. Couldn’t even do her job properly, and she probably expects me to tip her too! She put her hand out to take my fifty dollar note from me, and I felt like asking her “could I possibly get some beer with my head?” But I thought it best not, and I just gave her the fifty. $5.50 for head and half a scooner of weak, watery beer. That means, $44.50 change, if I’m not mistaken. She hastily hands me back the change and she serves the fat girl next to me. I count my change, and to my horror she’s given me $40.50 (two twenties, a twenty cent piece and 3 ten cent pieces). Before I get a chance to question her about it, she’s on the other side of the bar. As I said, I have morals. If she added those $4 to her tips, then I would have been tipping her for a job she performed much poorer than jobs people perform for me that I don’t even tip.
What evs. So I return to my table and continue to discuss the good looking ladies walking past. My friend says he’s gotta take a slash and grab a drink. So I sit at the table by myself. Pretty boring. So I do what every other person does when they are out and they are sitting at a table, alone. I bust out my phone and pretend to text (I’m actually playing bubble breaker on my HTC Touch). I’ve actually noticed that recently. To avoid looking like a loser, people always pull out their phones and text people, as if to show people that they aren’t loners, they are waiting for someone. I think a girl saw me playing bubble breaker too, and she looked away in disgust. Sort of like the looks I got from some girl I played The World’s Hardest Game in front of. Fuck you! Just because I can play a game that requires some intellectual skill! However, tonight I was eagerly awaiting a text, so I had my phone out so that I could read it as soon as it planted itself firmly in my inbox.
My friend came back and accidently knocked his drink over on the table. As the alcohol poured out over the table like Niagara falls, a group of ‘older’ women glared at us, as if we committed a genocide reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s plight against the Jews. Yes, we purposely knocked over an alcoholic beverage that WE PAID FOR just so we could look bad ass. After all, what else would we be doing whilst wearing leather jackets and greased hair? Anyway, I felt a rumbling in my pants (this could have suddenly gone down a path I would not have been proud of) and to my surprise it was a text message! An elevated feeling of excitement started creeping in, so I quickly fumbled for my phone and read the message
“hai. soz. no goin owt lolz. C u l8r.”
Great. Just great. The whole point of the night was to go out and meet up with these people and now they so happen to decide that they aren’t going out? Ah well, never mind. Looks like I’ll just have to hit the Valley without them.
After a nice fifteen minute stroll past the monumental finger – a popular place for drunken photographs – and a nice oily pounder burger to satisfy my hunger, we made it to the one and only Valley. After numerous knock backs and slices of the one and only new york slice, we eventually strolled into some quaint little cocktail bar. It was very small and the hallways were quite narrow and long. It was very indie, and I felt a little like an outcast there, as people with tweed hats and cheap suits whispered to each other whilst staring at us. While we were there, we thought we may as well try a cocktail as it may be the last time we ever return to that place (and evidently it was) so we ordered most tropical one there was. I can’t remember what it was called, but it looked exactly like one of the drinks at the Samoan Pub in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The cocktail, complete with colourful pink umbrellas and ridden with HIV, was so sweet, that I felt my teeth start to rot – just like the feeling you get when you suck on a lemon (literally). After finishing the refreshing yet sugary beverage, we decided to stumble into one of the more famous clubs...the Allumbrah.
My stay was quite comfortable, despite being situated right underneath the cold air conditioner. I sat on a footstool and watched an old forty-year old stroking the asses of two seemingly twenty year old females sitting on his lap. He was dressed as a pimp and to this day, I am still not sure whether it was fancy dress or his occupation. I was hoping he would fuck someone up with his pimp cane, but to no avail. Disappointed, I started to leave the club when I saw a nice gentlemen holding the door open for a group of girls. He saw my friend and I coming so he continued to hold the door open as my friend walked through. Just as I was about to walk through, the bouncer ran over and barged into me with his shoulder. He stopped and looked towards me like he was a rabbit in headlights and walked over to the guy holding the door open. He grabbed the friendly gentlemen, and moved him away from the door and I walked towards the exit and the bouncer walked over to me and violently pushed me away shouting “you can’t leave” as if I was staying at the sort of nightmarish Hotel California. The bouncer then grabbed the guy at the door and pushed him up against the wall. As I was walking out, the friend of the nice gentleman punched the bouncer square in the jaw and they both ran. Thinking that the bouncer might have thought I was a part of their clan, I ran with them until we reached a safe corner. I turned to them as we took a breather,
“Man that bouncer was such a bastard hey?”
“Haha man...no offense, but you have the face of a person who wouldn’t hurt anyone. That’s not meant to be offensive, you just don’t have a face for violence.”
Great. Way to cut off my balls. There they are, lying in a pool of my non-violent, over friendly offspring in semen form lying on the sidewalk. I can just imagine customs having a field day, “was there anything you’d like to declare?”
“Why there certainly is...My manhood thanks.”
I’m not really providing a strong defence for the male gender here. The truth is, I’m not actually doing any favours for any gender :P – unless you think acting in a way that is stereotypical is an ideal way to interact in society. However, I’m willing to provide a defence for some males at least in a moment. After walking around the valley getting knocked back by clubs left right and centre, I thought we may as well try one last ditch club called the 388. It seemed very quiet so I thought that we should have a good chance of getting in. We walked up stairs to the large open area with pool tables. They were all occupied of course – you can’t have a pub without a pool table coincidentally like you can’t have a pornography magazine without the porn – so we took a seat on the awkwardly high bar stool. I can’t think of anything more uncomfortable, save for a lone pea underneath 20 mattresses – yet it’s one of those things that people flock to in a bar situation. I mean, there’s no back to them! Another startling example of the effect of environmental factors and copious amounts of alcohol on perception of ‘comfort.’ Above the pool tables were three televisions, each displaying something completely different. Television one was showing the end of the rugby match. A wise choice for any bar situation, and any other day it would have been my number one preference. However next to it, on television two was the fashion channel, or what most males call the ‘Lingerie Channel’ providing 24 hours a day worth of skimpy clothing with a subtle guarantee: if you don’t see a see-through nipple within ten minutes, then the porno channel is free! Now, I’m not much for the ‘lingerie channel.’ The reason being is that I feel guilty watching those girls, bearing a nice visible rib cage, while I’m slamming down alcohol after scoffing down miscellaneous fast high cholesterol foods from various outlets. Don’t get me wrong though, the fashion channel is an aesthetically pleasing choice for a bar situation and most of the stereotypical males go wild for it. In fact, they often use it as a stimulus for interacting with other males, as one guy tried while I was putting down a coin for the pool table;
“How about the fucking titties on that sheila?”
Well actually mate… she’s anorexic so I wouldn’t exactly say her physique can be appropriately appreciated and secondly, she looks so ‘caked up’ that you could have sworn she was baked from a cake mix. Part of me wants to shout this out to this guy, but of course I would be bracing myself for a pummelling (or perhaps someone eating chips in my face then spitting them out all over me – more on that in a second). So naturally I yield to his commendable attempt at initiating a conversation and reply;
“Yes. They are nice. Nice supple breasts indeed.”
Not a very proud moment of my life I confess, but it was enough for that guy to comprehend. He stood next to me watching the television for an awkward minute, waiting for me to drop another conversation starter, but after realising I wasn’t really interested in listening to him, he walked off to avoid further embarrassment. In most male’s eyes, television two was a winner. In fact it seemed like it was so far ahead of the competition that you’d be expected to compare it to Usain Bolt’s 100 metre record breaking run in the way that he slaughtered the competition. However, in my eyes, it was what was featured on television three that had my undivided attention. Can you guess what it was?
The answer was Empire Strikes Back. Only the greatest Star Wars film of all time not to mention a landmark in cinematic history! How can anything else compete with Empire? In order to test out the popularity of Empire on the television screen, I thought I would approach the best looking girls in the club and ask them whether they shared my views. I stumbled over to the bar to grab another drink and I peered over to them and pointed up to the screen and laughed and then uttered the now immortal lines,
“So...Empire is on the TV. Absolute classic.”
The girls looked at me slightly disgusted and slightly confused. One of the girl’s knew what I was referring to, the other didn’t and she asked me in the most bitchy way possible, “What the fuck is Empire?”
I didn’t think such blasphemous language could come out of someone so beautiful – but so utterly stupid, so I quickly and calmly grabbed my drinks, turned around and walked away, ultimately forgetting that moment for the night. How could someone who wasn’t a prevalent reviewer at the time of its release hate Empire, and more shockingly, not know what is was? People like that aren’t worth my time…
This blog has been going on for so long that I haven’t even mentioned the accompanying soundtrack. Well let’s look at the track listing; first up we have Wonderwall, then Steal My Kisses followed by Under The Bridge and then to finish it all off, Holy Grail. In fact, that’s pretty much what it’s like at any pub. The same songs all the time. To the typical average Joe who is no music critic, it’s no problem (as you will see soon enough) but if you’re a seasoned muso like myself, who prides himself on his wide variety of favourite music genres and substantial knowledge of artists without the whole foot in the door of the mainstream market, then it can get a little nerve-racking and slightly tedious at times. Sure, who doesn’t love a good pub anthem? I certainly do ‘heart’ them, but not when they are played constantly at every pub I go to. At the Normanby once, I heard Wonderwall played three times by the same band in a space of four hours. My problem doesn’t only lie with the sheer repetitive song selection of the band, but the stereotypical males who sing the song in the toilets and comment on how much they love it. So ladies, I present to you what happens in the male’s toilets (unless you haven’t been in one yet)...
As soon as you enter, there’s a condom machine. The number of times those machines have saved my ass is overwhelming...uh...there’s a urinal that most people use and then there’s a stall that, if you’re lucky, is faecal free. Thankfully there was no one else in the toilet, so I took the end corner of the urinal. I had a nice joyful piss until a drunken bloke stumbled in and stood right next to me, and I’m talking an uncomfortable distance away from me so that if, and mind my analogy here, if my penis was erect that (and assuming his penis was erect too, I couldn’t exactly speak for him as I naturally wouldn’t and didn’t look) we could commence a sword fight similar to what you would see in a Pirates of the Caribbean film. Immediately, I courageously put my dick away and turned to the urinal, but there waiting were these two chicks. Great, if it isn’t awkward enough waiting for the toilets to free up, I have to spend it standing next to a girl. I have to wait for a girl to go to the toilet in my own sacred place of rest and relief! Now she’s looking at me as if I don’t have a penis or something and I’m just looking up in the air to avoid any sort of eye contact with the metaphorical third eye (other penises). I imagine the female toilets as some sort of heavenly experience, large mirrors, nice sparkling clean floors and seats and their own hand dryer woman, who gently dries the presented hands with a soft terrycloth towel. What made these other females turn to the dark side, we will have no idea. I sure as hell hope they weren’t watching me urinate either. There’s something unsettling about watching someone urinate, from the point of view of the urinating person at least anyway. When there are people waiting for you to finish, that is an added pressure that nobody needs when they recreating Niagara Falls in the privacy of their own space at the urinal.
So the stall is finally free and I jump in and...great...I wasn’t so lucky. There’s puke all over the floor and my shoes make ripples on the deep puddles of urine layering the floor. I wouldn’t mind betting the girl was the one who puked cause she was in there for a very long amount of time. Maybe girls feel that people waiting outside pressure too? Anyway, I get in the urinal and I hear two blokes enter together screaming the lyrics – “We’re half way thereAH...WHOA OH! Livin’ on a prayer! (complete with the usual instrumental and vocal pause as a sort of universal recognition for the audience to chant the well known lyrics) Then they start their conversation and it goes a little something like this:
“Ohhhh fuck man...I love this place hey.”
“Yeah man, fucking great night hey”
“Fucking love it. Love this song. They play great music here”
“Hot babes too...I managed to get a couple of numbers”
“Nice work...(sings more of the lyrics) hope they play the holy grail next!”
Sorry....sorry. Stop right there! Of course they’re going to play the Holy Grail you dimwitted twat. Well what do you know, as soon as I finish up, the band gets ready to play Holy Grail. As I’m listening to the conversation, I’m trying to push the door closed with one foot and pull up my pants from getting wet with my right hand. Eventually when I’m done, I ponder whether or not to flush because if I flush, people will think I did a shit while if I don’t flush, the calmly turd afloat in the bowel could be recognized by others as mine. Eventually I solve this moral dilemma by attempting to flush, but it wouldn’t work, so I just left it and walked out. As soon as I walked out, another guy walked in and shouted out “flush next time you cunt.” If I had a face for violence I probably would have grabbed his head and dunked it in there, but I don’t, so I just washed my hands and walked out.
Just on a side note, I thought I’d mention the guy who spat chips at me. I was standing at a bench, minding my own business, watching a thrilling game of pool between work colleagues and the intoxicated gentleman stumbled over to me and started trying to get my attention by shoving his, probably unwashed, hands in my face. I looked at him then sidestepped a metre. Then he continued to be annoying to the point that he ate some chips, chewed them and spat them on my shirt. He had a Mohawk so I didn’t want to mess with him, so I walked away. Enthralling story indeed.
I was starting to get a little bit bored with the whole pub scene, especially when they did an encore performance of All Summer Long by Kid Rock… (right...remind me to add that to my dislike list on facebook...EDIT: done) So I decided we hit up Family – my favourite club of all, despite the fact it is expensive to enter. But, I envisioned a night ending with a dance and a chance to break out my newly mastered ‘Melbourne shuffle’ (that’s right, I think the general public are physically capable now to handle my version after several successful attempts at the Down Under Bar – I used the Melbourne shuffle on some steps there to get up to the female only dance floor area...didn’t work, but went off amongst the Americans on the bottom level!). So we got to Family and we paid our eighteen bucks entry and were met with the best music of the night. I got to the main dance floor and it stunk of guy sweat and guy puke mixed with vodka. I deduced that either the guy had been drinking vodka and threw up, or he had been making out with a girl who had been drinking vodka and she threw up in his mouth. Either way, he stunk. He was probably a homosexual – seeing as heterosexual males only like the smell of other heterosexual males, not gay males, and I am definitely straight.
Anyway, the moment of truth. I found a group of girls dancing and I starting dancing near them for a bit then I busted out the Melbourne shuffle round one way, turned around and did it back the other way (I mcfail using my right foot to slide). The women were so impressed with my dancing that they had to disperse and leave the dance floor simply because they couldn’t handle my skill or just needed to sit down to watch and fully appreciate me. Though they all seem like valid and possible reasons, somehow I don’t think they are right. So, from this night onwards, I have hung up my dancing shoes. Though, if I ever find that special someone, I will resurrect them for an ‘encore performance.’
It was starting to get a little late, around 1am, and I have work in the morning, so I decided to call it quits and go and grab the bus home. Though my previous experiences with taking public transport home have yielded hilarious experiences – among them, taunting a girl who was throwing up in front of us, much to the disgust of her friend being the clear standout – I thought we would be better off catching a cab home than waiting an hour for the bus seeing as we apparently just missed one. So we walked over to a taxi rank and queued up. Eventually we got to the front and started to hop into a cab when two guys off the street, not even in the queue, walked over and started to try and rough us. “That’s our cab.” One of them had very bad breath. I looked at them puzzled and started to get in the cab, but they started walking over. “That’s our cab. You pushed in.” I thought I might reply with something, “fuck off mate. Get in the line you sodding twat (the sodding twat part was made up purely for lols)” I realised I didn’t want to be another statistic in a cab rank brawl, so I quickly turned around and hopped in the cab and told the driver to drive!
I was the last out of the cab, and the fellow was talking about George W Bush dancing to some Indian song. I wasn’t really paying too much attention, but I laughed anyway. Afterall, I tried to make some conversation with him so that the trip wouldn’t last as long. Why must we force ourselves to make conversation with the taxi driver anyway? I guess to avoid the whole awkward situation of sitting in a car with a total stranger. And what really is there to talk about with them anyway? It’s always the same three things: “how’s your night been? what time do you start? What time do you finish?” Next time I’m in a taxi, I’m going to tell the taxi driver “three things” and see what happens. Or I’m just going to be totally silent. This will be decided by the flip of pre two faced Harvey Dent’s coin with the latter being heads. I’m as spineless as Peter Costello.
Anyway, that was my night out. I hope you enjoyed it. I know I enjoyed writing it. I hope you all managed to relate to it in some way at least… perhaps next time you’re out for a night on the town you might notice these stereotypical things and, like me, you’ll be able to sift through the bullshit and perhaps find your own heightened sense of elation? Or maybe just chuckle and reminisce about what I said in this blog and submit to the hopelessness of it all. One day I might try to be one of these stereotypical characters I seem to mock in the above characters, but why should I, as I am a stereotypical character myself. The pessimistic narcissist, with a penchant for analysing the mannerisms of others. Maybe I’ll get out of this rut by attempting to run up the walls, parkour Jeremy style, but until I find my ladder, it seems like an unlikely scenario.
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