Drinking

Matt and I go out for drinks. I tell Matt about Carlo, he's impressed.

“There is this 18 year old…”

“There is this eighteen year old?” Matt kind of tilts his head sideways just a bit and waits.

“He’s been chatting me up.”

“An eighteen year old is chatting you up?”

“Yes.”

“Really.”

“Yes.”

“And where did you meet this… 18 year old who… is chatting you up?”

“In the park.”

“In the park?”

“Yes.”

“What were you doing in the park?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you?”

“I was reading a book.”

“And what was the eighteen year old doing?”

“He was playing soccer.”

“You were reading, and he was playing soccer?”

“Yes.”

“Who was he playing soccer with?”

“Just himself.”

“So, he was kicking the soccer ball rather than playing soccer.”

“Yes.”

“Not, um, two pursuits I can see with a lot of cross over.”

“Well, no, I guess not.”

“So how, exactly did you…”

“He asked me to play soccer.”

“He asked you to play soccer.”

“Yes, he asked me to play soccer with him.”

“Is the a euphonism?”

“No.”

“And did you, um, er, play… soccer with him?”

“No. Soccer?”

“I did wonder.”

“I turned him down.”

“For soccer?”

“Yes. Soccer. He went back to playing with his ball and I kept reading my book, on the grass, in the sun.”

“So, why are you telling me this?”

“Because, um, I couldn’t help smiling, I could feel it, you know when you are trying not to, spread across my face…”

“You wanna play ball with him?” said Matt.

“Of course, it’s ‘we’ might wanna play ball with him.”

“Okay.”

“Because I think he wants to play ball.”

“With us?”

I slid my hand across the table and took hold of Matt’s hand. “Yeah. We could have fun with him, I reckon.”

Matt shrugged. “Sure.”

“See, there should be more love in the world,” I cheers Matt, as we drink our first beer.

The bar is slow. We practically drink alone.

Matt smiles and touches me on the nose, just as I am thinking I'd got away with being naughty. (you never get away with anything, not really) Matt always knows what I'm thinking.

I have steak with mustard.

He has steamed fish with ginger.

We both drink beer, in schooners. The only time really that we drink it. I like the colour of it as much as the taste.

The last unrenovated pub in Fitzroy, opposite the commission flats. You see, there are something's for which to be grateful for the commission flats. The less fashionable end of Fitzroy. It doesn’t bother the residence of the suburb, just the tourists. I guess it will get its turn.

I love Fitzroy's graffiti. It is a part of Fitzroy's character. Equality. Egalitarianism. When Feminism started with my mother.

“What?” said Matt.

“We were taught that people are treated equally in relationships because of feminism demanding it of relationships.”

“That was the model we got?”

“Yes, because our mothers were liberated.”

“With feminist ideology?”

“Yes, even if they weren’t militant feminists, it still filtered down to them.”

“They were modern women.”

“Yes. And that’s how ‘we’ learned the concept of freewill.”

“From our mothers?”

“Self determining a course of action and then putting it into action, because they were allowed to do so, now that men were no longer allowed to be cunts.”

“What?” said Matt. He shoved a huge fork full of fish into his mouth.

“Shaking off the patriarchy concept and making my own decisions.”

“Because feminism started with your mother?”

“Yes, she expected to be treated equally and therefore she was.”

“By your father?”

“Yes, bud, by my father,” I said. “She wasn’t exactly facilitating threesomes for the two of them.”

“Like you are?”

“Well, it takes a certain self will and belief in yourself to pull such a thing off. Pun intended.”

“My very own live in comedian.”

“I thought you were going to say pimp,” I said. “But I will take comedian.”

“Funny boy.”

“I aim to please.”

“And I love you for it.”

We stumbled home drunk saying we were going to roleplay suffragettes. Matt wanted to be Emily Spankhurst, saying that he’d been a very bad girl. Not a place Matt would normally go, but he was pretty keen on getting his arse slapped.

“Very bad girl.” His face was starting to screw up, and his eyes were twitching, like all drunks faces screw up and eyes twitch.