The Diary - April 12, 2010, Later That Day

Here is the first bit of writing!

More writing done! That's 5400 or so words done today, which makes me ridiculously ahead of schedule for NaNoWriMo. Unfortunately, tomorrow is NOT the weekend anymore, so, you know, I doubt I'll be as productive as this.

And yes, I am aware that it just kind of cuts off, but I'm pretty much done for the night and I'm just exhausted of writing right now.

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April 12 2010 - Later That Day

I was a goddam moron at night.

I'm not the kind of dude who believes shit like that. I kind of pride myself on the fact. Michael Lincoln: Guy Who Doesn't Believe Shit Like That. I was a skeptic. I was so much of a skeptic that I was skeptical of other skeptics. If they made a show about my life, it'd just be me sitting on the couch, not believing in shit for half an hour each episode.

But still, no harm done. I just hope no-one ever finds this diary.

There was a sharp ringing below me from inside the work-clothes I had left sprawled on the floor. I scrabbled around inside and picked up my phone. Dave. Why was Dave ringing me so early? It was only 2 PM. Dammit, I hadn't even had breakfast yet.

'Dave?'

There was a crackle from the other side of the phone. Then, 'Mike? It's me, Dave. What's up?'

'Uh . . . not much,' I said. I always felt uncomfortable when people asked what was up, because most of the time, nothing was up and I was afraid they'd just get bored of me saying 'Uh . . . not much' all the time and start yelling at me.

'Me and Josh have got some big news. You gotta meet us at Timmy's. Ring Alex, tell her to come too. I know you two are like a couple or something.'

'Friends,' I corrected. 'Well, I guess you COULD classify us as a couple, but only as a "couple of friends".' I chuckled.

'Yeah, whatever, Mike. Anyway, meet us at Timmy's in half an hour. We've got this tape. It's real interesting, you'll like it. We've got this big plan.'

I sighed inwardly. Dave and Josh always had some big plan. If they didn't have some big plan, they wouldn't be Dave and Josh. 'Okay, okay, I'll come. You're paying.'

'Nuh-uh. No way. We'll play Fruitsies. I've already got a fruit in my hand right now, Mike. You are going down.'

I cast around, and picked up an old apple. 'Alright, alright. I'll see you there.'

'No grapes,' said Dave, and hung up.

I dialed Alex's number, waited for the answer. She picked up after three rings, like always. She said it gave the caller "time to prepare".

'Alex?' I said. 'It's me, Mike.'

'Hey Mike. What's up?'

'Uh . . . not much,' I said. 'Dave and Josh are doing this thing-'

'Dave and Josh are always doing things,' said Alex. 'You wanna come over and watch Back to the Future with me?'

'We're always watching Back to the Future. Marty's kissed his own mother so many times I'm surprised he hasn't formed NAMMLA.'

'North American Man/Mother Love Association?' said Alex.

'You know it.'

'I suppose I'll go, though,' said Alex. 'Van Helsing is no fun alone.'

'Be at Timmy's in half an hour, then. Oh, and bring a fruit,' I said.

'Fruitsies?'

'Yeah. And no grapes.' I hung up. I stuffed the apple in my pocket, stuffed my phone in the other pocket, stuffed my wallet in my back pocket, and slipped on a black shirt. It was dirty, but that was alright, because everything else was too.

*

Timmy's was Timmy's Diner, on the corner of Eucalypt Street, which was so named because of the growth of Eucalypt trees that had been cut down to build Eucalypt Street. It was supposed to be a tribute, I guess. Like killing a man and then naming your firstborn child after him.

Timmy's Diner was the kind of place that excelled in mediocrity. It served cold food hot, hot food cold, and everything else in between lukewarm. The pies didn't have any meat in them, but that was alright because no-one else's did either. All of the food was shit, it was just that sometimes that could be concealed by the sauce, which was slightly less shit. The coffee tasted like battery acid and urine - apart from the mocha, which tasted like battery acid, urine and prepackaged chocolate powder.

It was the best place in town. It was the only place in town.

Dave and Josh were already there. Dave had an orange; Josh a lemon. I brandished my apple.

Dave and Josh were the kind of men, to put it bluntly, you expected to be homosexuals. They went everywhere together, apart from the toilet, but that was probably only because they both couldn't fit in the same cubicle. They rented a room out in the centre of town. Just the two of them. Neither of them had jobs, but they both had cars, and they both managed quite well. How they did, I will never know. Alex had a theory that they were both secretly dark wizards on the run from the wizard law. Alex had a lot of theories.

I slid into a plastic seat bolted to the ground beside them. 'I haven't had breakfast,' I said. 'So this better be worth it.' I never liked breaking fast at Timmy's. Breakfast was apparently the most important meal of the day. Having it at Timmy's was like being baptised at a drinking fountain.

'It's worth it,' said Josh. 'But let's wait for Alex.' He looked from side to side, made sure no-one was watching, then rolled the lemon across the floor. It skidded on the slightly dirty tiles, bounced a few times, and came to a stop in the middle of the floor.

'Nice shot,' Dave observed. He rolled his own orange across; he threw it too hard and it bounced over into the corner and settled there. 'Shit.'

I concentrated. This could mean twenty, thirty dollars. I picked up my apple, rolled it around in my hand, then threw. It bounced once, rolled, and hit Josh's lemon directly, knocking it away into the corner with the orange. I smiled across the table.

'It's not over yet,' said Josh. 'Someone could . . . walk right into the corner and just stamp around. Anyway, Alex isn't even here yet.'

'Yes I am,' said a voice behind me, and I felt two soft arms wrap around my neck. In a friendly manner, of course. Like a friend.

Alex sat down next to me, holding an old, wrinkled peach. Alex had short brown hair that managed to layer and intertwine in bewildering, exciting ways, and a face like a mouse, except she didn't have whiskers and she wasn't a flea infested rodent. She had a full figure that she thought was a little on the chubby side; I thought it was a little on the beautiful side.

In a completely friendly manner, of course.

She was the kind of person who knew facts about history, and knowledge on how to train dogs, and knew how planes worked. She was also absolutely, without a doubt, socially retarded.

'Hey,' she said.

'Hey,' I said.

Steamy.

'Roll your fruit,' said Josh. Alex threw the wrinkly peach across the floor. It hit the two in the corner head on and scattered them across the floor just as a flock of ten or so teenage girls came through the door. The swarm of chattering, laughing, short-skirt wearing animals entered, engulfed the four fruits in their wake, then sat down at a few tables opposite us. I tried to pay attention to the fruits as 20 or so feet stamped across them, but realised that looked creepy, so I looked away at a kid eating a burger. Equally creepy, really, so I looked intently at the tablecloth, and not at all at the delicate little ring on Alex's left hand. Not at all.

When they had settled in their seats, still talking about, as far as I could make out, how small shoes were these days, I looked over at the fruits. All four of them were pulverised, squished to a pulp.

'We'll call it a tie,' said Dave.

There was a sharp cry from the kitchen. Timmy, the owner of the whole place, had spotted the fruit smeared across the floor. Timmy was a perpetually angry, balding man of the kind that laughed at pictures of balls hitting people in the forehead. He maintained that everyone was a dirty son of a bitch that needed no attention payed to them, so hired no cleaners for the diner, on the basis that the whole place would be instantly dirty afterwards, anyway. He'd told me this a few nights ago, drunk off his ass with a fifty year old woman with a boob job and hair dyed pink, checking into the hotel I worked at as a doorman. She looked kind of like an angry gargoyle, even when she was smiling; when she was smiling, she only looked like a smiling angry gargoyle. He'd called me Sam, slapped me on the back and signed in to the hotel, then stumbled into the elevator with her. This was about one in the morning, when the kind of people like Timmy and Gargoyle Woman checked into hotels.

'Shit and damn!' said Timmy. 'Fucking kids!' He screamed and ranted, and followed the fruity footpaths of the girls to their table, and told them they were dirty sons of bitches and they were to get out. He threatened to call security, of which he had none, and when they pointed this out, he threatened to call the cops. When they said he wouldn't do it, he pulled out his phone and shrieked at them they were going down, and rang the cops. There was a frenzied two minute conversation, during which the teenage girls laughed at Timmy and Timmy raged at the teenage girls, and Timmy slammed his phone down on the table in front of the teenage girls and told them once again that they were dirty sons of bitches and they were going down.

He departed into the kitchen, shrieking at his employees that, by God, if they didn't work faster he could fire them all at a snap of his fingers, and snapped his fingers to demonstrate. When a young waitress took this to mean she had been fired and began to walk out, Timmy threatened that, by God, if she didn't start working again he'd hire her at once and make her start working. He grumbled and shrieked tremulously and departed back into the kitchen and as soon as he was gone the ten or so teenage girls raised their hands and began a mass imitation of his tremulous shriek that was, on the whole, quite accurate.

'We should go,' said Alex. 'We should go.'

'We should stay,' said Dave. 'We should stay.'

'It feels like I'm intruding on some private conflict,' complained Alex.

'You only feel that way because you are,' reassured Josh. 'We'll stay. We'll stay and see how it pans out.'

The police arrived five minutes later, one of them a dark-moustached forty-year old man with narrow eyes, the other a young kid that looked around 17 with a thin wispy moustache. Both their moustaches bristled at the injustice of being called out to a diner for a domestic dispute. They went into the kitchen, and came out again with Timmy, his hands cuffed behind his back. When he shrieked that he had called them himself and they were to arrest the girls, they punched him in the midriff and told him he was a dirty son of a bitch and he was going down.

They escorted him out, and the customers around us sat in an awkward silence, until the girls again began to shriek 'You dirty sons of bitches are going down!' in Timmy's tremulous voice, and everyone laughed at the funny joke.

*

We ended up not buying anything at all, and since we'd already decided we'd split the costs four-ways, we each paid our equal parts of nothing and left the diner and went across the street to the park. The park was a wide expanse of grass, occasionally shaded by trees, occasionally populated with an odd bench. People liked to walk along and feed the ducks, or jog in the early morning. It was the kind of place that people had picnics in.

We sat down on the grass by the pond; Alex had bought a loaf of bread and threw it into the pond as whole. It floated, soggy and bloated, like a brick. A duck swam up to it and pecked hopefully.

'I think you're supposed to throw it in bit by bit,' I said.

'Probably.'

'Guys, guys,' said Dave. 'I've got to tell you already. Enough monkeying around.'

'Monkeying?' asked Alex innocently. 'We were monkeying?'

'You were monkeying, is what you were doing!'

'I don't see any monkeys,' pointed out Alex. 'Surely there would be monkeys involved in monkeying around.'

'They are metaphorical monkeys,' explained Josh helpfully. 'You're the metaphorical monkeys.'

'I'm a metaphor?' I asked.

'No, you're a monkey.'

'I don't SEE any monkeys.'

'Shut up, shut up,' said Dave. 'You're doing this on purpose. You two are doing this on purpose.'

'Am not.'

'Am so!' cried Dave. 'Am so!'

'Am no-' I began, but Dave tackled me on to the grass. Dave wasn't exactly a small guy, so my struggles only served for him to weigh down on me more. He ground against me like a horse against a tree.

'I'll keep grinding,' he said calmly. 'I'll keep grinding and you'll just be sitting there and I'll be grinding on you.'

'Fine! Fine! For the love of God, just stop grinding me,' I said. Dave laughed and hopped off. He turned to Alex.

'Time?'

She took out her pocket watch. It had originally been a fake pocket watch that came with a fake monocle, but she'd refitted it so her actual watch sat inside the compartment where the phony workings had lay. 'It's half past three,' she said. 'You're lucky none of us have jobs, Dave, otherwise we'd actually be doing something productive for society right now.'

'I have a job,' I pointed out.

'Graveyard shift at a shitty hotel doesn't count,' said Josh. 'That's more like . . . advanced slavery.'

'I'd rather be an advanced slave than a dog-ass lazy pig,' I said.

'I'm not a dog-ass lazy pig,' said Josh. 'That's harsh, Mike.'

'It's alright,' I said. 'Some guys are dog-ass lazy pigs. Some guys aren't.'

'None of us are dog-ass lazy pigs!' shouted Dave. 'Now can we get on with it?'

'We can get on with it when Josh stops being such a dog-ass lazy pig, maybe.'

'Call someone a dog-ass lazy pig again and I'll grind you, Mike,' said Dave. 'Enough.' And he reached into his pocket and took out his camcorder. His camcorder was a sleek, black thing he'd bought from a friend he knew in the Black Market for twenty bucks and a packet of cigarettes. That same friend robbed him of his laptop, television, and wallet a week later by the cunning method of asking to stay the night then taking all his shit. He left the camcorder, though. Dave liked to think the guy was hiding in Mexico, and that was payback enough for him.

'So, I was up at five or six this morning,' began Dave, and I knew with a horrible dropping certainty what was on his stupid camcorder. 'I was cutting an orange, I think. Or was it?'

'It was an orange,' agreed Josh. 'There was dried orange juice on the table this morning.'

Dave nodded, turned to me and Alex. 'There was dried orange juice on the table this morning,' he explained, 'so it must have been an orange. Anyway, it turned out I'd left the camcorder on.'

'And the television,' said Josh. 'You shouldn't forget the television.'

'I shouldn't forget the television,' agreed Dave. He turned to us once again. 'And the television,' he added. 'I'd also left the television on. Anyway, I turn the camcorder off. And the television, too. Or did I?'

'You did,' said Josh. 'When I got up this morning, the television was not on.'

'When he got up this morning the television was not on,' confirmed Dave. 'Consequently, it must be assumed I did, in fact, turn the television off as I did with the camcorder. So here I am, cut orange in my hand, both television and camcorder off. I look at the camcorder, realise it's on. I am forced to assume I have left it on, accidentally filming the television. So I open it up and look at the video . . .'

. . . And of course he found The Other Side, and the stupid God-interview, and since this was Dave he believed the whole thing without question. I listened as he excitedly told us about the whole thing, how the world was going to end in three weeks, how Jesus was going to do a retarded Sermon on the Mount on Uluru, how God didn't like dudes ditching other dudes for ladies.

'That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard,' I said.

'YOU'RE the stupidest thing I've ever heard,' retaliated Dave swiftly. 'Anyway, I've got the video, and me and Josh are really excited about the whole thing, and I guess what I'm really trying to say is we should take a road trip to Uluru.' He looked at us hopefully, as if he expected he could slip the whole proposal into the end of his little speech without us noticing.

I didn't think it'd be a good idea. 'I don't think that would be a good idea,' I said.

'Well your conception wasn't a very good idea, but that happened, didn't it?' said Dave.

'Please do not compare my conception to your crazy-ass idea to travel into the centre of Australia,' I said. 'Well, not exactly the centre. Kind of off to the left.'

'I think it's a good idea,' said Josh.

'I think I fucked your mother. Oh wait, I don't just think that, I did that.' I looked at them for a moment. 'Just listen to yourselves, you dumbasses. Firstly, how are we going to get to the centre of Australia? And, secondly, why are we believing a show about crazy people? And thirdly, and perhaps most importantly of all, why is your mother such a bad lay?'

'One, we'll use my Polonez,' said Dave. 'Two, what proof do you have they're crazy people? Seemed pretty legitimate to me. And lastly, because she caught it from you.'

Dave's Polonez was the FSO Polonez he'd bought for $700 and a carton of eggs on a whim, and it was so monumentally bad that the amount of money he had spent on repairs over the years had accumulated to more than the money he had saved by getting it instead of a more expensive car. Every three years, without fail, it developed a fresh rash of rust, even if the car was so rusty already that it was rust that was rusting. It guzzled up fuel like welfare payments, and the seats, the suspension, gearbox and dashboard fell apart at regular intervals, and the brakes had to be replaced every year - if they weren't, he'd find himself careening wildly down a steep hill and crashing with a thump into the backside of a semi-trailer; in fact, that had already happened. Most parts for it were obsolete, so these days the thing sat gathering rust like one of those weird old ladies who hoarded tea cups, and occasionally Dave dared to drive it. He had to be sufficiently stupid to even think about the prospect of driving it, though, so this meant the only times he would consider driving the vehicle was when he was very drunk, very angry or both - neither of which were prime moods to be in when driving a vehicle that had a proclivity to stall when you drove too fast.

'I don't think the old Polo could handle it, Dave,' I said.

'She can handle anything,' said Dave proudly. 'Have I told you about the time she saved me from a crash into the back of a semi-trailer?'

He had told me. He told everyone the story about twice every year since it had happened, and every time he managed to gloss over the fact that it was the Polonez that had got him into the crash in the first place. He had been travelling around fifty at the time, listening to a song the title of which depended on whoever he was telling the story to at the time and how drunk he was, when he'd come over the crest of Acking Street, the main street in town, which started on the steep hill and came down all the way through the centre of town. It was, miraculously, empty at the time, due to everyone being parked around the showgrounds at the time, which was hosting the annual Ackingville Show, where everyone met up and got drunk at eachother, so there was no harm done when his brakes failed and he came to a screaming, screeching halt as he crashed into the back of a semi-trailer loaded with furniture. The front of the car had crumpled hideously, he had slammed forward into his seatbelt, which went taut immediately, and the airbags shrieked outwards and engulfed him; he survived the whole crash without a scratch. He often focused on this fact when telling the story, rather than the fact that he had just crashed into the back of a semi-trailer.

Everything worked out with the insurance, and everyone advised him against buying another Polonez with the money he had recieved. He had carefully considered this, weighed in their suggestions, and two weeks later he had driven into town with a brand new - well, as new as it could be - FSO Polonez.

'You've told me,' I said. 'You've told us all.'

'I think it's a good idea,' said Alex.