Theme Park at its Darkest

V was a year behind me in high school. She was one of the most attractive girls I knew, and I was on the inside track because she was a friend of my sister. When I asked, she was kind enough to accept my invitation to the high school dance. V- was a lot less than impressed, however, when I arrived at her house to collect her wearing a leopard-skin tuxedo.

The boys in my year level loved the tux. Almost all the other girls shared V’s horror, however, and I don’t remember seeing her when the dance finished, let alone at the afterparty. In fact, I didn’t hear anything from her at all for another twenty-five years. 

She’d heard me speaking on ABC Radio National a couple of years ago and sent me an email. Long story short, she was most unhappily married and living in Brisbane. We started to spend some time together, talking our way through our respective situations.

V eventually left her husband and we had something of a row. Anyhow, I’d been seeing someone and when I had an emergency admission to hospital for surgery, I had a lot of time to lay on my back and think about things. The woman I’d been seeing steadfastly refused to talk to me, disappearing into the black hole of her phone, the refuge of all cowards and assholes.

I knew I’d burned V, and I reached out to apologise to her. Fortunately for me, she accepted and we were able to resume our friendship. She had left her husband, moved down to Victoria and acquired a boyfriend. After some probing, and making me guess, she declared that it was J.

A Misfortune of Mythic Proportions

J’s story after graduating from school was a tale of woe. He was as dumb as dog biscuits, and had developed a strange mode of speaking to try and foreground this and make a joke out of it, rather than awkwardly shunt it into the background.

He was a less capable footballer than the other kids who made it into the AFL; he had the athleticism, but not the sport-specific skills, I’m told. He had a career as a model – how much modelling that entailed I’m not sure – but soon fell into drugs, as did so many talented kids towards the end of school.

V told me he entered a relationship with a woman who was pretty difficult and ended up stuck with her, once they had a couple of kids. Her nickname, apparently, is ‘The Head’ because she has an enormous head.

This nickname is used by ‘everyone’, including his friends. J was still drinking, taking a lot of drugs – including meth – and smoking cigarettes into the bargain.

M, a close friend of J’s from school, had become addicted to meth and was pretty strung out. J offered M the opportunity to move into his house while he got his life together and kicked his habit.

M moved in, began an affair with The Head and then got her pregnant. She decided to keep the baby and J had to move out of his own home, leaving M living with his wife and two children.

This entry was posted on February 22, 2024 at 12:03 am and is filed under The Duel with tags ABC Radio National, AFL, high school dance, leopard skin tuxedo, The Head. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.