Six Degrees of Separation -

When I was in preschool, I was besties with a boy named Taylor. Years later I was working in the cinema and I was the bible belt version of Paris Hilton. For those of you with no respect for history, Paris Hilton was an OG It Girl back in the day. Young, dumb, beautiful and popular. Girls and gay guys wanted to be her, and boys and closeted lesbians wanted to do her. Picture a low rent pre-breakdown Brittany, but without the talent, living in middle-class suburbia instead of Hollywood. That was me.

So, one day I’m sashaying around the local shopping centre with my mother like all truly fabulous it girls trapped inside the body of still and slightly chubby gay boy, when I spot Taylor and his mother. Not wanting my worlds to collide I tried to avoid him. At this time, I was not out to my family, so whilst they knew me as their slightly girlish son, they had never met the fabulous mean girl bitch I was once safely ensconced in my little cinema kingdom. I was the Regina George of the Cherrybrook multi-plex, the unquestioned queen bee, but like a superhero, none of which I can name because I’m not into that shit, I was leading a double life. I just about shat my pants when my mother started waving and cooeeing ‘Hello Lavender’ and Taylor’s mother responds ‘Hello Poppy’ and they start to chat. Have you seen the movie the Truman Show? For a brief bowel clenching moment, I worried that I had been under surveillance and my mother knew all my secrets. My instinct was to shit myself and cry so the problem went away, an instinct I still fight to this day. Luckily my bowels were a bit slow that day because it turns out they were not needed to salvage the situation. My panicked eaves-drooping soon taught me two things, maybe three. First, I have a shit memory. Second, Taylor and I had been pre -school besties. And Thirdly, I default to shitting myself far too easily.

Taylor is now my roommate of two days. I hope he is intending to stay for a while because I need at least 6 months recovery time to deal with the trauma of getting his fucking bed up all of those stairs. Some people come into your life for a season, others for a reason, some have to stick around a bit because they have elaborate fucking beds that are incredibly difficult to manoeuvre upstairs. Unless Taylor is prepared to pay a removalist, his role in my life will not be a brief one. I mention this because for a time between flatmates I had a series of Airbnb people renting the spare room. One of them, Casey seemed nice enough, if slightly disrespectful. Casey never cleaned up after himself, and helped himself to things that most normal fucking people consider personal. I can’t tell you how many times he used my toothpaste or helped himself to my condoms. I think he was just a bit naïve, probably never lived out of home before and thought everything in a house was communal. I’m a bit suspicious of the parenting trend where everyone is besties and mummy and daddy supply the condoms for the kids. How do you rebel against an emotionally immature parent who desperately needs to be the ‘cool mum/dad’ other than becoming a Mormon? It's practically abusive, forcing your children into such a bleak future because you haven’t moved on from the trauma of not being invited to Karen Sullivan’s 6th birthday party because you didn’t eat dunkeroos like the cool kids did. I’m sure it was the highlight of the social calendar in Rooty Hill Primary school, but you shouldn’t be inflicting your psychiatric wounds onto your children. It’s the cycle of abuse people.

Casey simply didn’t show up on the day he was supposed to arrive. Eventually he phoned to say he would arrive somewhere between 7 and 10pm the following day. I’m not so sure why he needed a 3hr window. How fucking hard is it to go: I have to be there at blah, so I will leave at blah, so people are not waiting around for hours for me. But as I said Casey was useless at many of the things, we simply assume functional adults can manage. I went to bed at 6pm because I had had a big weekend. I had given him clear instructions on how to find the place, where the key would be and I had left the kitchen light on for him. Casey turned up drunk and stoned at 3am. Managing to locate the Buddha at the bottom of the stairs, (lit by a tasteful floodlight for gentle ambiance) was all too much for Casey. Look I have been there myself, but that doesn’t mean I’m not judging Casey. Instead of knocking on the door, he rang my other flatmate (who was overseas at the time) 17 times. Exhausted by the effort he had expended hitting re-dial, he climbed into the children’s cubby house in my neighbours’ yard to have a nap. After a short kip in the cubby house, he awoke at dawn to the startled faces of the homeowners peering in at him. Feeling refreshed after his night in the dolly bed inside some poor child’s cubby house, he managed to find the key and let himself into our house.

I had just awoken from a well-deserved 12hr beauty-sleep, and was naturally looking fabulous in the early morning light. Naturally I ignored Casey’s rudely late/early (depending on your perspective) entrance and made him find his own way to his new room. After a luxurious hour taking advantage of the good lighting to take some moody bed selfies, I got out of bed and allowed Casey to introduce himself. Luckily, he was hot or it just wouldn’t have worked us being roommates no matter how temporarily.