Bullets from Paradise - Christmas 1999

December 25
Found a message from Monica on the answering machine this morning, asking me to go to a party, but that was last night. Also, a message Samuela left after I’d fallen asleep at 10 p.m. yesterday. But I was too tired from my eight-hour train trip to see my grandfather yesterday, to check the machine. I just dragged my tired ass into bed and crashed. My brother John also called to tell me he and Anna are expecting a baby. That makes me an aunt twice in less than six months. This morning Marino called; obviously concerned about me being here on my own today. We used to spend so much time together before he was married. “Glad to have the time to myself, actually. I’ll spend the day writing.”

Who am I kidding? It’s the last Christmas of the century and I’m all by my self. Don’t panic! This doesn’t necessarily make me a loser, does it? I must have been doing something wrong with my life, to be all alone today. Is my mother right? Am I being punished for being a horrible human being? Alone but not lonely, right? I can take care of my self. So why do I feel like crying?

A base riff is thumping upstairs – someone’s Christmas present. Instead of turning on the computer as I’d planned to do, I sit at the kitchen table reading the week’s papers that have accumulated in a monstrous pile. This is a good way of spending a day off I reckon, I need the rest. After all, it’s just another Saturday; except all the shops are closed, the church bells keep ringing and none of the people I call are home. It’s started to snow, I was hoping for a white Christmas.

I turn on all the electrical appliances, just to liven the place up a bit. I set the timer in the kitchen, turn on the radio and put the television on mute, turn on the oven to re-heat a loaf of bread gone stale. No Christmas lunch or dinner, no presents, no cards, no e-mails today. Not even from my family; to think I spent over two hundred bucks on Christmas greetings this year. I’m more alone than an orphan. I doubt whether I’m even good enough for soup handouts at the Sacred Heart. I should have a pet. It’s my first Christmas alone and all I’ve got is too much time to think. I can remember in exact detail what I did every previous Christmas for the last ten years. Visiting my divorced mother in Queensland or my ex-defacto’s family in the Western suburbs. Everyone in the world complains about having to spend today with their family because they have no idea what it’s like to have no one boring to waste the day with, at least it’s something. Better than nothing.

Maybe I’m over-dramatising, my ex always used to say I was a bit of a drama queen. Monica once spent Christmas on her own, although that was while she was engaged in a humanitarian mission in Guatemala. I have no such noble excuse. What happened to me is: I left Melbourne where I spent the last twelve years of my life and came to Europe. My family are all over the place, scattered to the four winds: from northern Europe to the Mediterranean south, from Australia to Northern America. I’m from nomadic descent.

It’s four o’clock and no one’s returned any messages. I think I should get to work, but now that I finally have the time to write, I don’t feel inspired. I draw a cue card for inspiration. It says: “It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer.” I sticky tape it to my VDU and re-check my e-mail account for the ninth time today, the same message reappears: “unable to locate lc1.law5 server try again later”. I pull out my sowing kit and sit cross-legged on the couch. Time to fix the tears in my life. Meanwhile there’s a Woody Allen rerun on the telly, Take The Money And Run.

At five thirty p.m. I’ve mended whatever I was able to and decide to run a hot bath. While the water is running, I cut myself a large slice of Pand’oro that I eat without a plate. The icing sugar flies away and lands in a white dusting over the floor and on the red fabric pouf in the living room. Just like the snow outside. It’s getting dark. I switch on the fairy lights that I’ve strung throughout the flat, wrapping them around the pot plants and the television set, letting them hang from the bookshelves and architraves, then I pull out the vacuum cleaner and vacuum the icing sugar and the peanut shells, which were still stuck under the rug from last week’s house-warming party.

I wonder if condensation is bad for the portable phone lying by the sink. In the tub I stay still, my head underwater. It’s almost foetal. Wish You Were Here is playing on the radio, I turn it off pointing the remote. Danny read the first half of my manuscript and liked it. Shall I shampoo my hair? Not if I’ll go swimming tomorrow, Sundays is my pool and sauna day. But what if I decide to go out tonight? I’ve been neglecting my appearance, I’ve lost weight though, that’s one good thing about depression, it curbs your appetite for everything. I hold the make up mirror up to my face, the side with the enlargement glass. Eek! It’s time I did something about those eyebrows. And I must get out of this track-suit-pants-mentality and start thinking about style, after all, I work in Fashion. At last I fit into all the clothes that were too tight before. Besides, I bought a whole lot of funky new gear at Kookai, I just don’t get out enough to get excited about being sexy. I’m turning into a social recluse; going shopping has become a form of outdoor exercise.

I wrap my damp hair in a towel, in the kitchen I fill a tumbler with one part Vodka one part tomato juice. Who said writers are all alcoholics? I cut a lemon and squeeze a half into the cocktail, some cracked pepper, a dash of Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce. Ice. Merry Christmas! At the back of the stereo cabinet I find an ancient King Crimson album, once my favourite: Discipline. As the familiar music plays, I sit at my desk in the studio, before the computer. With a flick of the mouse I close Netscape and click on a file called New Stories. Yes, merry Christmas, I’m going to write, that’s what writer’s do.