Week 3 - For Shame, For Shame, For Shame

Sigh... okay, so I guess I'm going to tell this story... I remember as the events transpired – I really don't know whether to say that it's “something that happened” or “something I did”, so 'transpired' will do – thinking, “I can't WAIT to tell this to Luka and Blake when I get back to Luka's place, this is going to be HILARIOUS!” The difference between that and this though is that this is a blog that anyone – potentially TENS of people – can read, with not even an effort made at anonymity. So before I start this story, I'd just like to say sorry to my coach, my team, the club and all the fans, I've let you all down and brought shame upon us. My grandparents, aunties and uncles, some cousins, and of course my Mum. Dad... if you ever read this, you'll probably laugh your tits off.

Last Saturday night Luka, Blake and I drank (Blake doesn't drink but he was definitely there) a bunch of beers at Luka's house in Heidelburg and then went for a mission to the shops to buy ice creams around 2:30am. Luka and I rode bikes and pulled Blake along on a skateboard, and it was a magical evening culminating in the three of us sitting on top of a storage container in some sort of construction site car park, overlooking the lights of the city. We went to sleep around 5am.

At 7:30am Sunday morning I woke up to somewhere between the first and twentieth missed call from the boss of the four-man cleaning company I work for: we only have one set of keys to get into the venues we clean every day, so after our shifts we have to put those keys into a PO Box in the city for the next day's cleaner to grab. I had forgotten to do this – not the first time (FUCK FUCK SHIT FUCK) – and so was now charged with making my way into the CBD to meet with the Sunday morning cleaner and letting him into the venue, and then helping him clean to make up for lost time. No pay, no sleep, no happiness in the world.

I stumbled around Luka's house with extreme anger and volume until I had gathered up a rough approximation of 'my shit', and then started on the twenty-ish-minute walk to the train station. When I got there I arrived upon the grim realization that I needed to take a shit... BADLY (aside: I have thought long and hard about the wording of this admission, and rest assured, that particular phrasing was decided upon with no small amount of consideration). The digital screen thingo at the station said there were five minutes until the train would come, I ran down to the service station to see if they had toilets and the clerk pointed me in the direction of of some public toilets not on the premises which, as it unfortunately turns out, were imaginary. I had only one option left. Now I know you are probably all saying, “but Taco, there are plenty of options for you... why didn't you go and search for the public toilets? Why didn't you just hold it until you get to Flinders Street Station, where toilets are in sheer abundance? Why didn't you offer your supple young body as a bribe to the clerk in exchange for use of the staff toilets, to which he surely had a key?” No. I had. Only. One. Option.

So after I picked out a suitable bush in the parklands beside the tracks and pulled down my pants to relieve myself (I had decided before to wipe with some empty pages out of my notebook, como he hecho muchos tiempos en Bolivia), the lights for the train crossing started ringing. I was in a hurry, I needed to catch this train, I finished up, grabbed my shi... STUFF! I GRABBED MY STUFF, and without doing up my belt, ran to the platform. To find the train. Leaving.

I had to wait forty minutes for the next one to come.

I have done a lot of stupid things while drunk – smashed tram station glass windows, lit fires, yelled at friends, enemies, made poor decisions. But I think the most depraved and soulless part of any drunk's journey from Drink 1 to “below the legal limit” is that seldom experienced stage in the hours after the last drink, when the body's wheels are spinning in the mud, trying to begin recovery. Normally I'm asleep for this part, and my broken mind can flail around in dreams (interesting fact: I always talk/shout in my sleep if I've been drinking heavily before bed). On this day though, because I was woken up after only 2.5 hours sleep, I was fully conscious as my soul struggled desperately to gain a foothold in sanity... this is my justification anyway. On the tram I downloaded some porn, but I couldn't really watch it very effectively, even in the sparsely peopled Sunday-morning service, because I had no headphones. I lost them. I am a fucking mess, I know. When I got to Flinders I got off and then walked the three blocks to the venue I was supposed to meet the other cleaner at and, noting that I still had about half an hour before anyone would be in the venue, I... I... ok...

… I really don't know how to frame this, but I DESPERATELY want to somehow take some of the heat off of myself in the next sentence. I can't though. There honestly is no way I can possibly talk myself out of the responsibility for what this is, but I guess I just want to thank you all at this point, for reading this far, because as much as you now may want to, I'm sure the present sinking feeling in your gut is evidence enough to all of us that you are stuck here with me. We are all past the point of no return and what it is that happens next, sadly, now feels inevitable.

I jacked off in the toilets.

Not into the toilet, mind you, just in one of the cubicles, but that's neither here nor there. The door was locked, it happened in under three minutes, but it happened, okay guys? That's what it is, that's what I does. Did. Have done... breathe you a sigh of relief.

When I told the story later to the guys back at Luka's, Luka had the best punchline to this part of the story when he said that, “you did things in exactly the wrong order, you should have taken a shit in the toilets, and jacked off in the bush.” Now THAT'S comedy. I also thought of Louis CK's story on episode 111 of the WTF Podcast with Marc Maron where he bought a $1600 trumpet and only realized he had made the purchase out of anxiety after he went into a jack-off booth in times square and came on the case... years later his therapist told him that masturbation is a great way to relieve anxiety and stress, so I guess that's what that was... okay, I'll stop talking about it now.

I cleaned for half an hour until the guy – lovely German dude, a little quiet but probably just pissed off because I had fucked his morning – rocked up and we finished cleaning the place together and went our separate ways. The only real reason I had to go back to Heidelburg rather than making the much shorter journey to my own house was that I'd left the keys to my own house with my wallet at Luka's and it was 10am when I finished cleaning, the pub doesn't open 'til 12.

On the train back though, through a random series of events I found myself talking to a thirty-ish-year-old guy with a Razor Scooter (AHAHAH! Oh trust me, I KNOW) and a scraggly Ill Bill-type beard who was on his way from Dandenong (shitty area) to Heidelburg (less shitty, probably hour-long one-way journey) to take part in a poker tournament of around 700 people in which he came 14^th last time (second-best out of those from his Dandenong poker club) and hoped to make the top ten this time so as to take home some prize money, 10^th place offering $200... for some reason I'm good at remembering stats. He also told me that his two daughters were two of only five Australian children at their primary school in Dandenong (IMAGINE?!) and “everyone else at the place is Indian”, so he likes to play, “Spot the Aussie” with them, but has since been banned from picking his children up from school, on what he considered to be the wildly spurious charge of racism.

That last part is actually a very funny story in it's own right, but I am aware, as I'm sure you all are too, of the fact that we definitely peaked about three or four paragraphs ago and that this is essentially an epilogue. I couldn't end it back there though could I? No, no no no no. Very very not.

So that's it, that was my Sunday morning. Even as I write this I'm still not sure whether I'm going to send it out, but then, as I just wrote that, I thought to myself, “who are you kidding dude, a story like that? You don't have the humility in your body to deprive yourself of the attention this could potentially garner.” And you're right, Me, so up it goes. Into the ether. Oh god, this is it. What the in the fuck have I done?

Peace, Taco.