communication puff piece.

1.

I feel like I am coming apart at the seams, sometimes. Not now, though. Right now my seams are well-defined and definitely in check; perhaps because I’ve been pulling at them, examining them, trying to figure out what makes me tick. I haven’t worked it out just yet, but I think that I’m on the way.

I am sitting at my desk in a state of inaction. I have the ghost of a hangover slithering round the recesses of my brain – too much Pinot Gris last night, sure, okay – and my dehydrated brain is refusing to function. If I have any more water I’ll vomit, or my stomach will get all distended and I’ll have a crisis of faith and think I’m getting fat again. I tell people that I’m better with all that, maybe just out of the belief that if I say it enough, it’ll be true. But I am better, better than I was, and I definitely have better things to worry about then being “better”. As my mother, dressed head to toe in polar-fleece, clutching at a glass of red once snarled at me during an extended battle of wills: “there are children overseas dying right this second, so finish your squash you ungrateful shit.” I never quite understood that logic, though – if they were starving, why couldn’t they eat the squash?

2.

I think I want to write something self-reflexive. Or maybe meta. Meta theatre. Yeah. That’s in vogue, isn’t it? I don’t feel like anything I write has a Message, and Messages seem to come in spades to everyone else around me. Maybe my Message is that I don’t have a Message. Is that punk, or is that just idiotic? It’s probably both.

3.

Zero interest puff pieces on Facebook:

“I have an obsession with travel shows at the moment…”

“In white for my own sanity. Edit: at 8.45am I can’t”

“Meet Conchita Wurst, the bearded dragon Dad and I rescued form our backyard – hashtag conchitawurst hashtag beardeddragon hashtag lizard hashtag nativeanimal hashtag justcallmekhaleesi hashtag motherofdragons”

“sexy, warm her up or she will die in this weather to cold”

“ok read the small print EDDY you dik, NSW home fro lizards”

4.

Last Friday afternoon a small brown package arrived at my doorstep – moisturizer I bought online at the recommendation of a friend. I wonder when I became the kind of person who buys beauty products online. Another friend called it “going full gay”. I wonder why sucking dick isn’t enough to “go full gay”. The small package was filled with dried rose petals which promptly and inconveniently spread themselves across the entirety of my bedroom, and a bunch of product samples with a handwritten note that reads:

“Dear Chris – Thank you so much for trying out our Facial Fuel!!! We’ve included some samples of our full range in case you’d like to try anything else. Love, The Team at Kiehl’s.”

I’ve used the samples up now, all but one, and I can’t tell but I think my pores have been reduced. Maybe. It’s hard to tell in this light, but I worry what’ll happen once I run out of samples – will my pores go through withdrawal? Will they open up to twice their size like tiny cavernous craters across the surface of my skin? I hadn’t realised moisturiser was a gateway drug. Whatever else, my face now smells like Playdoh. It’s a good thing.

5.

Facebook again. My cover photo reads: “I AM NOT AFRAID”. It’s a picture I stole from someone’s tumblr, feeling particularly courageous at the time. In actuality, I’m quite afraid, of a lot of things: spiders, weight gain, HIV and other infectious diseases, becoming successful, not becoming successful, getting hit by a car while crossing the road, getting caught in an elevator with someone I don’t know particularly well but know well enough to attempt to make awkward conversation, the bouts of anxiety and overthinking that relentlessly permeate the times in which I don’t see you. I appreciate the encouragement, though, which is why it’s still up. However, I’ve got five photos lined up to replace it including a hideous mosaic of Honey Boo Boo, so we’ll see how long the inspiration lasts.

6.

Tumblr post: CONFESSION. Sometimes I can’t get up in the morning.

Does anyone not feel like this at one time or another? Show me the person who bounds out of bed every morning with a smile and a feeling of innate joy and security. Then let me punch them in the face. Maybe that’s why grand expressions of life’s hardships are so popular. Universal themes.

7.

The sister of an ex of mine went to school while Chris Lilley was filming “We Can Be Heroes”. One day, some five hundred girls were ushered into the assembly hall and told to sit, watch, and remain stoic, stony-faced regardless of what was about to happen. After maybe ten minutes of silence, Lilley emerged in full Ja’mie get-up, walking through the aisles and screeching into a microphone: “Another kid – dead. Another one – dead. Dead. Dead. Dead!”. This was before he rose to any sort of prominence, and the commotion, confusion and general hilarity it caused was apparently quite the sight. That’s the reaction I want from my work, I think: that high, uncomfortable laugh, a wild look of confrontation and terror, an insistence that they’ve got to see it all again, again, again.

8.

Lyrics to a bizarre, out of tune home made music video uploaded by a girl I went to university with: “XPRESS YOURSELF! XPRESS YOURSELF! XPRESS YOURSELF? XPRESS YOURSELF!”. To expunge it from my brain I put my iPod on shuffle. It immediately begins to play “Maps” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

After a second, I skip forward. I don’t need a breakup mix-tape, but thanks anyway.

The next track is Nine Inch Nails. Better. But underneath, I can still see that girl and her pals, dressed head to toe in satin and sequins, dancing on the steps of some officious building: “XPRESS YOURSELF! XPRESS YOURSELF! XPRESS YOURSELF? XPRESS YOURSELF.”

9.

Five text messages selected at random:

1. “I’m in the lift bitch”

2. “We’re at the rege! Come along Chris-tOh-pheromone”

3. “*pher arghhhhh dammit auto correct!!”

4. “Hey buddy, sorry for sending that weird msg yesterday. I unfollow people all the time. Hope you’re having a good time in QLD we should defs make the effort to catch up when you’re back. xx”

5. “I miss you babe xo”

Communication weirds me out, more than it should. It used to be easier, or maybe I just used to be more open.

10.

Sometimes there’s just too much and you’ve gotta let it out.