193rd email

From: Dom Borax
To: Undisclosed recipients
Sent: Tuesday July 30th, 1999 20:01 PM
Subject: Party Invitation. Dom and Elsa’s – Sat’ 7:30

Hello All, sorry about the global.

Elsa and I are having an impromptu party on Saturday night. It's more of a celebration for Elsa than me as she is a way better person than I am.

Please feel free to debate:

Anyay – the address: 4/15 Albert Street West End – 7:30.

It's a fancy dress party.
The theme: Come as yourself.

And in case you’re not sure who that is we’ll have some cocktails waiting for you on arrival to help.

Apart from that please bring your own bottle, bag of jellied fruits and a secret that you’re willing to share to a small group of people for social buoyancy reasons.

Of couuse the latter is optional but if you embrace the suggestion you will certainly elevate the discussion beyond shared entertainment and take it to a place of a communual gossip.

Coz aint that what it’s all about, folks?
A little chatter stops us fearing death, right!!??

See you then.


Love
Dom

PS Not sure if I should have mentioned the word ‘death’ in an invite for a piss-up excuse for a party.

Please don’t let it get you down.

And in a weak attempt to rectify that odd detour in tone I offer this triviality from my own life for you to ponder, be amused, dismissed and distracted:

Sometimes I pretend to be blind to get attention.

86th email

From: Dom Borax
To: Stacey Marchenkova
Sent: Thursday June 21st, 1999 12:24PM
Subject: RE RE RE RE Matrix and Election

Hey Stacey,

I’ve been thinking more about time – how I relate to it – and I think I was too flippant in my previous email.

Here’s how I relate to time:
I wanted it to be faster when I was younger.
I want it to surprise me currently.
And I suspect I’ll want it to slow down in years to come.

Oh, man, I think that sounds twee.

I might try again. Here’s how I relate to time:
It shits me. Honestly. Time shits me.

The reason: I’ve done so many stupid things in my life I need to blame something.

So from this moment on: I blame you! Time!

Because I would like that time again, Time. You tease me with the concept – but it’s a lie.

You lie, Time!!

You’re fickle too. Why do you keep switching it up on us? You take an hour away and give it back according to what? Daylight saving? Fuck off, Time.

Not only that, but you blatantly self promote as well.
You’re everywhere. You’re on my bedside table, you’re on my wrist, you’re on the microwave and you’re on top of the Suncorp building. You’re even the top of these emails always putting your two cents in.

So what are you selling? Huh? What is the deal with such constant advertising? What’s your product?

Is it death?

Good product, Time, good product.

Death.

Hey and Time; what’s with the image shifts? Do you have body image issues, Time? Don’t you know who you are, Time? Do you have to constantly change your appearance to get attention?

I mean, one moment you’re an hour glass, the next moment you’re a digital watch. Make up your mind, Time. No one will be able to relate to you, Time if you have so many disguises.

So be yourself and stop hiding behind your brands; then maybe you might find love.

Finally Time, what’s with your humour?

What’s with this thing you call ‘dramatic irony?’

Where is the gag in what you call ‘bad timing!?’

How is there a joke in, ‘He likes her, she likes someone else, he then likes someone else and she ends up liking him.’
That’s not funny, time; really not that funny.


Dom

PS And OCD is just Time offering a no-win duel. This is what Time would say if you challenged it:

Time – Do you want to fight me? You can fight me if you want. Pistols at Dawn. But apologies in advance - I might be late.

70th email

----- Original Message -----
From: Dom Borax
To: Stacey Marchenkova
Sent: Wednesday June 9th, 1999 8:05AM
Subject: RE RE RE New string of conversation

I think I will die drowning while filming a water safety commercial…
or

Accidentally stabbing myself with a chained pen in a bank as I cash a birthday cheque…
Or

Dying of old age at my computer while waiting for some massive cartoon attachment that’s not even funny…
Or

Being beaten to death by an idiot while wearing I’m with this idiot T-shirt…
Or

Misjudging the time and being hit by a bus that I thought I was running late for.
Or

Tripping and smashing my head on the footlights as I run onto the stage of some profit share production of Waiting for Godot yelling at the tramps – stop this show it’s killing me!
Or

Forgetting how to breathe for that minute too long.
Or

Electrocuting myself as I try to make a boat out of toast in the bath.
Or

Mistaking the sign that reads ‘koalas cross here at night’ as a caution to motorists not as warning about rage.
Or

In Italy. I don’t care of what. Just wouldn’t mind dying in Italy.


Dom

PS And speaking of things ‘Italy’ (gotta love that segue) I adore those Italian Thrillers too.

Crisps (the guy whose party we met at) is a real trash fan – I think it comes from being British and a childish curiosity about the Video Nasty boom. I think he listed and sourced them all.

He shared it with me and I got obsessed too.

And at the fear of sounding educational again (I so want to be Mr Chips. Indeed so did Crisps. That would make him Crisps Chips – message to self; do something about you’re a.d.d for Christ sake, Dom – and do something about talking to yourself in print too – Jesus!)

Anyway those Italian thrillers are called Giallo films (Giallo meaning Yellow – like the faint stained yellow pages in airport pulp books).

I’m kinda obsessed with them. We should watch a couple together. Let me think of two cool ones and I’ll get you and Marcus over for Spag’ bog’ and Euro sleaze.

69th email

----- Original Message -----
From: Stacey Marchenkova
To: dom borax < mailto:printthisplease@printthis.com >
Sent: Tuesday, June 8th, 1999 21:37 PM
Subject: RE RE New string of conversation

Dom, actually I have thought about how I’m going to die…

I hate to admit it, but I have…

I used to I think I’m going to die in the next war…but that was flippant…

then I wanted a heroic death…a true ride into oblivion…like diffusing a bomb…saving lots of people…and being obliterated…

then I thought that maybe my moment of heroism should be smaller…maybe it happens when I see a child crossing the road…and I dash across the traffic, push them out of the way and get hit by the car instead…

I really thought that would be the way I’d go…

When I was sixteen (fuck it…I’m looking back again, but whatever) I used to stand on the side of the road for hours waiting for the child to cross into danger…I was so prepared…willing it to happen…and every time the pedestrian crossing finished its call of safety, I looked up and down the street looking for that kid-like Charon skipping my path to the river styx

(btw had to look up Charon and how to spell it…always thought it was Sharon who guided you across the river styx…felt a little disappointed that it wasn’t…because I really liked it was Sharon…felt cosy…think it was because I really liked this aunt who was not an aunt called Sharon when I was growing up…)

When I was eighteen…I revaluated my death moment…

I was really getting into sleazy Italian thrillers…and I loved how the women died in them…

I thought that would be cool…black handed killer in a mask chasing me down some really stylish corridor…I nearly escape…but find myself in the reddest room in the world…crash zoom and some glorious Morricone music and I’m stabbed in the heart…really stabbed…I fall to the ground and see his shoes….only his shoes…patent leather…and as my breath runs out, I see it fog on his shoes…getting harder to see until the smudge is only a small puff…then nothing…

But I started having nightmares…so this passed too…

Then I hit nineteen and I really thought I might die of an overdose or something…
Chelsea Hotel and some folk fucking around…me doing it…keeping up with The Joneses, you know…and there was this guy there… a real drug slut…his name coincidently was Jones…and there was something so damn sexy about the bones in his chest and his lank fringe and his stove pipe pants…and the nicotine stains…and that morning small of bourbon…

But I ended up meeting a real life Jones (his name was Pete) and in real life all that smell and dirt wasn’t romantic at all…it was so boring…and he was the worst lay I ever had in my life…

So as I near my twenties…end of the month as it happens…here I am…and now I think I might die in my sleep…that’d be pretty good.

And you? You asked the question, buster…how do you think you will you die?


Stacey

68th email

----- Original Message -----
From: Dom Borax
To: Stacey Marchenkova
Sent: Sunday June 6th, 1999 20:28PM
Subject: RE New string of conversation

Stacey – how are you? My name is Dom. Not sure if you remember me. We’ve met a couple of times now. Anyway that’s the past and we all know what happens when you dabble in the past –

First you take your time machine.

Then you go back to the 1950s where you meet William Wyler on the set of the film Roman Holiday.

Then you convince him to stop doing so many takes and change the ending so Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn actually get together this time.

Then you travel back to your own time you discover that Hepburn and Pack are still together but their romance has died.

Damn you world.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Because of you meddled of the space and time continuum - there is now a sequel to Roman Holiday called Washington Workday.

Here, Hepburn abdicated – and married Peck. She moved to America – to Washington and lived in the suburbs. She becomes a good cook but gets lonely because he’s always working and going on interesting international assignments.

One day she starts taking pills and soon she’s addicted to some kinda of anti depressant – and before too long – while he’s away on a trip (ironically in Rome) she ends up dying from some simple but cruel head-hitting fall on the back stoop.

Bad time machine.

So you try again; perhaps as a form of punishment.

This time you use the time machine to look to the future. You set the dials fifty years ahead and arrive at the point of your own death.

You deeply want it to be grand and meaningful – heroic even. But it isn’t. You’re in a hospital bed. It’s not even raining. Two people are by your side. One of them is a nurse. And you just stop.

Bad, bad time machine.

With this knowledge in mind - you go back to where you began – trying to either spend the rest of your life not getting that disease or waiting for the moment of nothingness – always one step ahead.

So it’s a no-win situation.

So you destroy the time machine and berate yourself for using this astonishing piece of technology for rather mundane and pointless reasons.

And from this point on you realise that it’s also pointless looking back and probably pointless looking forward, hey?

So I agree. Let’s fuck the past. Let’s fuck the present and just focus on the now.

Though fearing of contradicting myself; how do you think you’ll die btw?


Dom.