17th email

----- Original Message -----
From: Dom Borax
To: Stacey Marchenkova
Sent: Saturday, May 8th, 1999 4:24 AM
Subject: I am so sorry

Okay I know you shouldn’t speak on the telephone, send telegrams (how old am I) or e-mails when you’re still drunk, but I feel utterly compelled to do so.

I feel utterly compelled to say I’m sorry.

I mean I thought the night started out well. I was so happy when you won 100 bucks on the poker machine. And the band was good. And when you said you liked their ‘Navigation Song’, I thought there was a real connection. It’s my favourite too…

“Together we set sail, separately
Afloat on the deepening, darkening sea
With Superb Navigation”

And David (the guitarist) is such a sweetie. And sorry for pushing him to try and dedicate a song to you on my behalf. Poor form.

And sorry I drank too much. Drinking makes me talk. And I feel I excelled myself.

One huge monologue.

I know went too hard about how I think my gender is full of knobshiners. Hey!? I did. I reckon I did.

But in truth – it is how I feel. I really do. I’m a self hating guy.

My gender are fools. They prance around hiding behind the fogscreen of mateship – half time orange sucking and testicle tickling.

"At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them"
(or whatever it is)

This is the time, I reckon all the fighting, cruelty, dumbassedness, non-showering, perving, lack of respect, jingoistic fuckknucklery isn’t actually remembered at all.
It’s actually forgotten.

'Cause it’s easier that way. It’s easier to stick a yellow sheet over your scurfy scalp and say – hey I’m not going to remember the small things and say sorry for my male pack terrorism.

No - I’m going to remember war. I’m going to remember the glory. I’m going to weep mud and blood and yell YOU DON”T UNDERSTAND - even though you weren’t there either.

'Cause the brotherhood is all important, right, a Brotherhood of little Masons with their aprons hanging over the conservative uniform of daddy’s boys - polo shirts and pleated pants.

Not men. Not like those footballers who ate each other in the Andes to stay alive.
I love them those guys.

Nah, I’m talking about the Friday night Rowers and the Saturday night romantics.

These guys, who when you strip them down, say ‘mate’ when they mean ‘fuck her.’ (or him – you seat warming public school hypocrites)

Once I spent a weekend at a Surf club when I was 14. My folks were away and the only place I could stay was with a ‘mate’ who was hanging with his uncle.

Over the weekend – in this club - I saw mateship.
I saw the gang push this one guy to drink beyond.
I then saw the gang make the guy run through town naked, hose him into the urinals, stick his genitals in engine grease, stick a snooker cue up his rectum and finally cut himself with the fragments of the mirror they made him smash with his own head.

Why!?

Because it was funny, it was a laugh; it was mateship.

Cricket teams, Football teams, Dungeon and Dragon teams (okay maybe they inhale a dodecahedron dice and swarm around wizards instead) do it too.

And even then - they blame it on initiation.

Initiation into what, I say!? The Catholic skinned penis brigade?

The gang that worships the slag they will have as the sun goes down and boot out in the morning?

‘Cause in the morning, we remember them… right?

Wrong!

We forget them. We forget it. We were too drunk. And even if a glimmer of memory remained we will laugh at the common enemy and say:

“God, I love my mates. They understand me. They let me get away with murder.”


Dom