Bali 2018

Have you ever been in such a shit place your spinning and spiralling has hurt the people you love most? This is a story about an earth quake. A serendipitous moment where the very earth we stand on was mirroring my destructive inner world.

I booked my flight to Bali at the height of my anxiety. Like all well thought out plans involving leaving a toxic job, faking a sickie and running away from your problems, I decided to act on impulse and regret at leisure. In this case the leisure would involve a 5-star Balinese resort because there is no point in half arsing financially destructive impulses. Obviously, this subterfuge needed to be top secret, so equally obviously the whole world knew of my plans before I left the country 48hrs later. Despite the last-minute booking, the cost was not too bad. On a scale of McDonalds dollar menu to house on the Northern Beaches it was heaps closer to the dollar menu end of the scale. Like all good stories, my inner environment was dramatically mirrored in the outer environment. As I was arriving in Denpasar a 6.9 earthquake hit the city of Lombok and radiated throughout the rest of Bali. This was only the aftershock of the earthquake that hit 2 days prior. The aftershock that signalled my arrival in paradise killed 89 people. The plane circled the airport for an hour while they cleared the debris from the runway.

I was in Bali to seek solace with my dear friend Buddy. (Again, the dear friend thing is really funny. Joe Lycett Google him) Buddy described the aftershock to me and said it was the scariest thing she had ever experienced. Buddy was in her hotel room on the second floor and hung over when the bed started to shake violently. Luckily Buddy came up with a super well thought out survival plan that involved waving a deck chair about and worrying that she had finally had one drink too many and was having a schizophrenic break from reality. Luckily for Buddy, but unluckily for the Balinese people it was an environmental disaster not a psychiatric one that was causing Buddy’s world to tremble.

Luckily the damage seemed to be controlled to the Lombok area. On the drive from the airport to Legian beach near Seminyak there was no obvious visible damage and people on the streets seemed at ease. The Balinese people are obviously far more relaxed with major environmental disasters of the external kind, than I am about my inner world spewing hot fire about. Buddy described the earthquake as pretty much the standard shocking scene from a disaster movie. Speaking of disaster movies, in the movie San Andreas, there’s a scene where the Mum is meeting her new boyfriends’ sister at the top of her new boyfriend’s multimillion story building. The actress was Kylie Minogue, a national treasure and I will fight anyone who says differently. There’s a dramatic scene involving an earthquake. Watch that movie, it will show you what it was like that fateful day in Bali, and again Kylie Minogue, national treasure. From the absinth fairy, to the bitchy self-serving person in the middle of a natural disaster, to the arse that looks fabulous in a pair of hot pants, Me and Kylie just work.

Now when I started writing my story, I had planned not to speak about my friends too much out of respect for their privacy. However as with everything in life, every rule has an exception, and this is one of those exceptions. This is the tale of a person who empowers me and how I hurt them by accident when I was hurting inside. Buddy is awesome, Buddy is my best friend. Buddy is a person that knows who she is, knows what they want from life, and lives with grace and courage. Buddy has a loving partner and a beautiful child. Buddy took care of me when I first started working for KRONOS. She warned me about the poisonous culture and the spiteful crones. She took me under her wing, and took care of me, but never treated me like a feeble fool needing protecting. Buddy was my fierce and fabulous friend who was there to guide me but always saw me as an intelligent person worthy of respect. Buddy is my soul sister; in a weird sort of way she is the other half of me. The best way to describe it is by cribbing lines from a powerful orator (Me):

My speech at Buddy’s 50th Birthday:

‘Happy mother fucking 50th my love,

Weird we both turn our big numbers this year, you 50 and I 30. It’s like we’re totally in gay sync with each other except your married with a lovely child and I’m a raging homo. But enough of the positives let’s look over some fun-loving memories.

My groom to be, my mentor, my friend, my drinking bud, my shoulder to lean on. You cover a lot of roles and dutifully fulfil them with ease. Your experience, truthfulness and fun-loving nature is what draws me towards you as a friend and the fact that you are one hard bitch that would smack down a fuckwit in Manly any day.

I guess I have a lot of things to thank you for over the last three years. Thank You for taking me under your wing when I arrived at KRONOS Dee Why rooms and not letting me get eaten by horrible vultures such as Ursula. Thank You for always taking care of me in general, Thank You for loving bourbon as much as me as well as loving the tv show, the crown! Your bleeding talent is amaze and you have passed this onto me and now I’ve excelled beyond. But seriously, I do value your friendship beyond most others and that’s because I know your heart is true. If you ever leave or move it won’t matter. No matter how far your go, or how wide we get, I know that our friendship will work and continue to grow and make other stupid people like cunt face jealous and that’s when you know you're doing it right.

I’m assuming your trip thus far in Bali has been amaze and continues to be. You know more than anything else in the world I wanted to be there, but with money and butt issues and now throat, lol, Jesus traveller said no. For now, Anyway, I really do hope that the volcano explodes and you get to extend your trip and piss off David Brent; the only downside is that I have to wait longer for that bourbon and cigarette with you. The things I look forward to is that even though I couldn’t be present on this trip, we can plan another one down the track to Bali where’s it’s all about us. Sexually and mentally, another reason why I love you so much is the fact that you never piss me off, or rarely LOL. I mean fight wise. But if we do, we yell it out at each other's faces and we’re over it by the next day like true friendships should be. I hope your manky toe isn’t too present on the trip babes. I’ll take ownership for that one.

Now let’s do a notebook situation. I hope you’ve seen that film ha ha. But I think when we grow old and Obvs you’ll go first, not due to your age but the sheer fact that you can still party twice as hard as I can. The reminder I’ll have of you, will be through your amazing child Buddy Jnr. Which we all know will turn into an amazing strong and powerful person. When that day comes, I’m sure I will lose a big part of my heart! Mostly to do with the fun and amazing support you have always given Me. Try to hang around a while will you. With all my heart, have an amazing 50th tonight in Bali. I Am there with you in spirit my love xoxo’.

As you can see, I am a natural born orator, a true renaissance man or for the less classically educated among you: a man of many talents. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day that speech is up there with Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech or the Kanye West “Imma let you finish’ speech. Powerful stuff. But most importantly it is the slightly inebriated ramblings of my soul, the unchained love vomit I have for Buddy. Back to the story at hand. I went to Bali because I was hurting. Buddy had retreated to Bali to lick her wounds after her own clash with KRONOS and David. She was there for her own time out, but I was hurting so badly and wanted my friend, that I didn’t think about what would be best for her. My surprise visit was not the most pleasant surprise Buddy has ever had. Buddy is first and foremost an independent kind of person, and my arrival at her place of retreat left her shook. Like all good alcoholics, my first night in aftershock paradise saw me drunk and whorish. The problems that had caused me to flee, had mentally followed me. I had believed I was coming here to help my hurting friend, but the ugly truth was I had come expecting my hurting friend to help me fix my own hurts. I saw Buddy as needing fixing, and from my muddled place thought I was just the man for the job.

Picture a baby elephant rushing at full pelt towards its little Thai keeper, desperate to show its love, but crushing its keeper friend in the process. It was a bit like that, maybe a lot like that, Ok exactly like that in a metaphorical sense. I had convinced myself that Buddy was being complacent, and that I had the answers. I had convinced myself that I, a man drowning under the weight of the problems in his life, had the solutions to her problems. I was drowning, but I wanted to save my friend who had been dumped by a wave closer to the shore than I was at in my current predicament. Contrary to the core, if anyone told me what to do, I would spitefully take the extreme opposite action. Buddy is older and wiser than me, with far more life experience, she was my sounding board and mentor. But here I was travelling across the world to tell her what to do with all the arrogance of a Nigel. I am ashamed to say I interrupted Buddy’s holiday for my own selfish reasons. At the time I thought I was doing her a favour, but now I know that it was in fact about me and my needs. I wanted to know Buddy was Ok, because if Buddy was Ok, half of me was ok, even though the other half was quite frankly fucked. In trying to fix my friend I hurt her. I took her to a place she didn’t want to go, to a place she had retreated from to build back her strength to fight another day. Because she is a better person than I could ever hope to be, but one I aspire to be, she forgave my bumbling attempts at fixing her. She is to this day my Buddy and the other half of me.

Paul -

If I was going to describe Paul to you as a character in a movie it would have to be Amy Schumer, in basically any of her films. Amy, though delightful, is not known for her dramatic range or acting ability, so any film you watch of her will be the same character. So, feel free to imagine your Amy Schumer film of choice and we will still both be on the same page. Despite my catty opening remarks, stop clutching your pearls ladies, the catty gay man trope is a trope for a reason, I love Amy Schumer, snarky is simply how I show my love. I enjoy her empowering romantic comedies, sometimes you want the depth of a good scotch, sometimes you want the bubbles of faux champagne, Amy is faux champagne all the way. Much like Amy, Paul was chubby but confident. He was as clumsy as a type of animal who is really clumsy, I’m not great at animal metaphors. The opposite of a cat- like if a cat was wearing high heels on a polished wooden floor, nah a cat could probably still make that look more graceful than Paul in Nikes on a slip proof surface. Paul was loud and carefree and yet oddly responsible. A balance I have never been able to manage myself, but one I admire in others. Paul was a hot mess, the real sort not the carefully curated Instagram sort that is contrived to make a botoxed barbie seem relatable.

Amy Schumer has just released a fairly new film called ‘I feel pretty’. The premise was pretty simple, Amy Schumer plays a character that works in a make-up company and has no self-confidence. She decides to join a cycle class and while intensely cycling, the chair of the bike breaks from under her. Straight to the fat jokes, it’s not Shakespeare people. She goes down hard and hits her head, then her hair gets caught in the cycle next to her and half of it is ripped off. I know it doesn’t sound funny on paper but it was kind of funny. Unlike Amy, Paul doesn’t have much hair, so the silver lining to his follicular shortcomings is that he will never be at risk of being scalped by a bicycle for comedic effect. She recovers in the back of the spin room with one of the receptionists and wakes up believing she is a whole new person.

Amy has now, in her mind become the hot girl that she always wanted to be. Her confidence is through the roof. The movie did get some pretty bad critic and audience reviews but I felt it touched on a bit of a human truth. Who hasn’t met an unfortunate looking person who thought they were hot? a person with low to average intelligence who thought they were a genius? a boring fucker who thought they were hilarious? It’s the Dunning-Kruger effect. On the flip side who hasn’t met someone so hot they make your legs tremble who thought they were ugly? someone so smart they made everyone else in the room look like nose-picking kindergarten kids who worried they were dumb? someone so hilarious you started laughing before they got to the punchline because you knew it was going to be funny who worried they bored others? Anyway, I feel Pretty was light hearted fluff, with an easy little lesson for the viewer too obtuse for a pop-psychology message that hasn’t been spelled out in pictures: Highlight your strengths, believe in yourself. Instagram stuff really, just 90mins long.

Paul was definitely a key figure in my life, and at one stage was a really great and supportive friend during and after my breakup with Jordan. Sadly, even in the best of friendships, things can change quickly and dramatically. It’s really more of a saga, because even though the story of Paul and I was short and sweet, it dragged on like a bit part actor with a dying scene that’s dragging out their moment just to stay on stage.

It all began when my partner at the time, Jordan, left me because he couldn't turn the air conditioner on. Being dumped because my boyfriend lacked the coping skills to deal with being unable to work an air-conditioner contributed to the abandonment issues I nurture to this day. My roommate at the time and good friend Sam had tried to warn me about Jordan. I like to think I was blinded by love, but truthfully the organ blinding me to his faults sat a bit lower on my body. Sam believed that Jordan was no good for me and was only dragging me down. Sam said that Jordan had no drive, and was a sponge who did nothing but smoke weed and binge watch TV. These things were true, but at the time I didn’t want to see it. Jordan was my first serious boyfriend, the first person who had loved me (however difunctionally this would prove to be), the sex was good, and I didn’t want to be lost and alone again. So, like a stereotypical Scorpio, I pushed away my friend who with my best interests at heart, had told me something I didn’t want to hear. I cut all contact and moved out. Sam had been a rock for me for the previous 4 years. We even bunked together in Sam’s brothers house for next to nothing rent. I undervalued what Sam had given to me in so many ways, and threw away a friendship because I didn’t like being told I was wrong. While this was happening, I also had a huge falling out with Jordan. As you will see me demonstrate time and time again, I do nothing by halves, even destroying my life is a scorched earth event. I met Paul on an app and invited him over for a few drinks. Paul had just ended things with his partner of ten years, and just wanted a friend and a chat. We had a few ciders had a great banter and that was it. We met for coffee when either of us was feeling a bit down or lonely. After leaving Sam’s, I moved back home to my parent’s house. After a week and a half of having my bedroom curtains and sheets stripped by six am, (love you mum) even on weekends (apparently mothering is a 7 day a week job) I felt it was time to move on.

The next weekend was the Mardi Gras in Sydney. I had never been to one of the after parties, because tickets were outrageously expensive. Even in the gay community, on the gayest night of the year, no-one wants to hang with the poor people. Being fabulous is a costly business. Being newly single and moderately depressed, I decided the expense was an investment in my future fabulous life. Ready to hit the booze and the booty, I went to my first Mardi Gras afterparty with Paul and his boys. Under the influence of Molly and surrounded by hot gay men wearing very little, we decided to be flatmates. Within a week we were moving into our new home in Dee Why. The first year was great, I mean we were both alone and depressed, but we were alone and depressed with each other for company. We got drunk, made new friends, took work less seriously than we should have, burned bridges and damaged reputations along the way. Happy times.