A Tennessee State of Mind

It is a Tennessee Williams kinder night tonight. You know the ones where the moisture hangs in the air like wet cotton wool and there is a storm rumbling in the distance not sure whether it’s going to visit or not. And you wander around your apartment chain smoking, sipping scotch and clutching your pearls asking your imaginary maid to close the blinds and draw a bath. If only I had some scotch, some cigarettes (haven’t inhaled in 5 days) or an imaginary maid; I reported her to immigration some time ago…she’s been on the run ever since.

So here I am, stuck in my Tennessee menagerie waiting for something to happen. My parents arrived down from Brisbane Friday night and they brought the monsoons (along with ten pieces of luggage) with them. It has not stopped raining in Sydney since. They are out in the Tennessee storm tonight catching up with friends for some noice choinese in Casula; a suburb I’ve read about somewhere between the M5 and Perth. I have tonsillitis. I love it. I haven’t partied or drunk in two weeks and nor has a billow of nicotine passed thy lips in this time and I now have tonsillitis. No wonder I relapse.

My parents are down for ten days. Such annual visits are akin to somewhere between an episode of Survivor and George & Mildred. Four adults in a two bedroom flat wacks the allenging back into challenging. I’ve been in Sydney since 2001 (my brother; 2002) and since then, my parents have made their annual ten day visit; it always falls around mum’s birthday on the 7th….which is tomorrow. And as I get older, I’m still continually amazed at how easily I fall into the psyche of that a 15 year old when they are around. It’s like I am back at school waiting for my lunch to be made so I can catch the bus. I’m 33; I really thought I’d be getting over that teenage angst by now. Maybe it’s guilt or denial ….probably both.

Still; it is nice to have them down; home cooked meals every day, the fridge full and everything an “other worldly” clean. It makes me realise how much I miss them and how guilty I feel that my brother and I are so far away. When you only see your parents a few times a year, you notice abruptly how much older they are becoming. I guess it reminds you that time with them isn’t forever. Good god how depressing is this ….am I Charles Dickens? Scotch please.

Britney has been committed: finally. Maybe I should join her.

My friend Kevin had a birthday party for his partner Jason on the Monday of the Australia Day long weekend. It was Kevin’s first soiree since he purchased his flat and he had Martha Stewarted himself into bbq perfection. Perfect salads, perfect crackers, perfect tongs …..perfect company. It was wall to wall gay couples all of whom I know but never actually see due to their coupled predicament. I felt like the gay (slightly plumper) version of Carrie Bradshaw.

Happy Gay Couple (they always talk in unison: like American tourists): So John no one special?

John (looking for more wine): Oh no….happily single (no matter what you say here regardless of whether you’re happy about being single or distraught, you sound deranged, desperate and/or delusional.)

Happy Gay Couple (still in unison): really? u don’t want to meet someone nice?

John (skulling wine): Ha ha…well who wouldn’t (desperate) but not out there overly looking (delusional)

Happy Gay Couple (more unison…is there a chord between their heads?): Well you’ve always been the wild one. (great: they think I’m an alcoholic)

The Happy Gay Couple will then go on to try and match-make you with someone who holds about as much attraction to you as Ralph Harris. All this talk of course makes you think that you should be out there pursuing every lingering stare or lazy eye……otherwise something must be wrong with you. I couldn’t be bothered. I did that in my 20s and am happy to leave that experience to that absolutely dysfunctional decade of my life where I fell in love with a pot-plant if it looked at me sideways.

Having said that if someone with the looks of Orson Welles (the young version thanks), the wit of Richard E. Grant and the charm of George Clooney came up to me and asked me out to dinner…..well a thoroughly modern homosexual isn’t going to say no is he?

C