I remember back when I was a young'un...

Arghhh... I'm having a budget nightmare at the moment. My excessive drinking of months past and constant shopping for clothes I wear once and spill grog all over really don't match my income. But its got me thinking back to how much my financials have changed over the years...

The last house I rented in Toowoomba, nine years ago cost my housemate and I $175 per week - in total. That was for four bedrooms, two bathrooms, two living areas, and a big back yard in a fairly modern low set brick house. Our friends thought we were mad paying that much rent.

The last house I rented here in Brisbane with Kat was $380 per week, and for that we got three small bedrooms and one bathroom in a fairly crappy post-war home with a toilet cistern that kept falling off the wall and a hot water system that would magically die during winter mornings.

But was officially inner suburban (in fact walking distance home from the Valley, if you call a 40 minute drunk stumble walking distance), and we could see the fireworks over the river so it wasn't all bad (but that ruins my point).

As assistant manager at the Mecure Hotel Toowoomba I used to earn $35k per year. That was for a salary position, with no overtime, more often than not working at 70 hours plus a week, managing two restaurants, two bars, 3 function rooms and 98 hotel rooms and then all the fucking paperwork that goes along with it.

These days a base level receptionist at work earns $38k to answer the phone, sign people in and out of the visitor's register and do some basic data entry.

That's royally fucked in my humble opinion.

One thing that I noticed that hasn't really changed over the years is the price of grog. Sure, you can pay up to $10 for spirits in some clubs up here, and cocktails are a fucking rip off, but I can still get a scotch and dry for between $5 and $8 in most pubs. Considering I used to charge $5.50 for basics in my hotel almost ten years ago that really isn't too much of a price increase.

So... its kinda like Jesus and K Rudd want me to drink, yeah?

It's not a tumour...

I have a very active imagination, which is fine when having naughty alone time in your bedroom and the Internet is down. Not so fine when you get a little snippet of information about your ex and you jump to the conclusion that he was cheating on you....

So I got an email this morning from "the nice guy who doesn't want a relationship" with the subject "Brisbane is a small town". We email quite regularly and looks like we are becoming mates which is all good really. Anyway, he basically told me that based on our previous conversations he thinks he may have hooked up with my ex (The Man) and was feeling bad about it, and didn't want to hide it from me.

At first I had a bit of a laugh. The gay scene in Brisbane is incredibly small and everyone has slept with every one's ex. Or so I've been told. It's the only gay community I know, so I have nothing to compare it to. So it's not unexpected to learn your ex's may hook up sometime, or even start going out together. He had no reason to feel bad about it at all.

But when I re-read his email, it sounded like they had hooked up about 2 weeks before I had done the deed and dumped him over the phone. And this is where my imagination went into over drive.

I spent the next 2 hours waiting for the nice guy to respond with some more details about the supposed event, and just about went crazy trying to work out the possibilities. Things like "On this Friday night he didn't want to see me, so that must have been the night they hooked up. But what if it was more than once? What if it was every time he went out drinking without me? What he if was shagging his housemate as well?" and so on and so on.

So my neurosis continued to build and build and build until the nice guy came saying the guy he hooked up with was about 5 foot 10, and 25.

My ex is 6 foot 4 and 40.

Morale of the story... a headache may just be a headache, it's not always a tumour.

A phone conversation I didn't want to overhear...

I got to sleep in today. Yay for sleep ins! So when I rolled out of bed at 11:00am, I was feeling fresh and relaxed and oh-so-happy. It makes a nice change from the grumpy, cranky, desperately-in-need-of-a-few-more-hours-sleep Benji that appeared out of my room all week.

So I chucked on some shorts and an un-ironed Tee, found my havvies and headed up to the servo to grab the Sunday Mail (hardly worth the walk, but I like to read something as I have my morning coffee).

As I was getting close to the gates of my complex (there's about 50 or so townhouses and we're right at the back) I saw one of the cute young guys that seem to inhabit the place pacing up and down outside his unit.

When I got closer I could see that he was on his mobile and was having a friendly chat. "... So it was a big night then? Yeah sounds like fun. Sorry I missed it."

Sounded just like a normal morning after debrief between mates where one didn't get their act together in time, so missed out on some of the night's entertainment.

Been there, done that.

But the conversation continued...

"Hey, um, the reason I called is that my mum died last night, and I can't make it today."

My heart sunk for the poor guy. From the way his tone changed, this wasn't the first person he'd told today, and there was potentially a lot more that he needed to call. His voice cracked a little bit, but I didn't hear anything else because I sped up to give him his space.

It's the type of phone call that I fear having to make. I've been very lucky in my life that I haven't experienced much death. I've only been to four funerals, and they, of course, were not much fun at all.

When my maternal grandfather died from a massive heart attack a few years ago, I was the first of the three children to make it back to mum and dad's place after hearing the news. I walked in to hear mum on the phone to someone relaying that exact same conversation.

When I looked at her phone book she was only up to the D's, so she still had a long way to go. But you could hear that from the tone of voice that she'd relayed the bad news many times, and that she had already become versed in accepting people's condolences and kind wishes.

After she ended that call and we had a bit of a cry together, she asked me to help call some of her friends, as she couldn't face telling those ladies.

So I made the call to her three best friends. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. How do you tell a casual acquaintance that some one has died suddenly? I'm not sure how the words came out of my mouth, but I got the message across.

I still remember Caroll (who is my favourite non-aunty 50 year old woman) immediately becoming suspicious when she answered the phone;

"You never call me. What's wrong? Shit, is your dad OK?" she asked. When I explained what had happened and that mum needed some help with the calls she said, "Fuck! Tell her she's a stupid bitch and I'm coming over now to help". (You can see why I like this woman).

And she barrelled through the front door 10 minutes later with two bottles of wine and promptly took mum out the back to have a chat.

I didn't have to make anymore calls after that, and I hope its a long time before I ever have to make another one. My folks are still young, but you can't pretend its never going to happen.


As I walked back down from the servo with my paper and a bottle of coke zero, I saw the cute guy sitting on the bench outside the pool gate. Just sitting, staring.

I caught his eye and gave him a nod and a smile, and he smiled back. But you could see in his eyes that he was hurting.

Then his phone rang, and he had to start it all again.

The nickname game

I used to have a rather juvenile habit of assigning nick names to people who were once part of my life, but now, I don't really give a shit about. Some still lurk around the edges, but I try not to talk to them as they generally shit me to tears.

Beth Ditto - a former housemate, who unfortunately bore a more than striking resemblance to the lead singer of The Gossip. A friend named her T-Bone for her stark diet consisting of T-Bone steaks and mashed potato.

Eyebrows - I've briefly mentioned him before, mainly for his annoying habit of wiggling his eyebrows during oral sex.

Elbow - my first ever boyfriend. He was 16 years my senior, which put him very close to the age of 50. He was given the horrible nickname of "Elbow" by friends (not that he ever heard it) because someone surmised that his "old balls would feel like the dry skin on your elbow". I did my own comparison on him one night. They felt nothing like my elbow skin. (Confess - your feeling your elbows right now)

Whore Lip - this is a horrible nickname for someone who I still talk to quite a bit, but she gets really really bad cold sores on her lips. Anyone that's seen American Dad will get the reference.

The Slapper - I was this woman's team leader for a couple of years. The first day I arrived she had the nerve to tell me that she was much more qualified to do my job but decided to give someone else a chance to do it. That kinda set the tone for many months of hell in managing this chick. She was also massively overweight, and had a bad habit of wearing dresses that were way too short for her. She had bad body odour and the day she perched herself on my desk I almost passed out from the smell.

Tumbleweed - a certain manager in this place who only blows in during the quiet times and blows right out the other door.

Moley - another boyfriend, and this guy just had so many moles on his face so it was an obvious choice. On his ears, on his lips, on his back, arms, legs, chest, hands. He used to use solariums quite regularly, so I was quite concerned about the melanoma risk. He just wanted to be tan, even though he was South American and already had a great skin tone. He was also known as the hairdresser, as, um, he is a hairdresser.

The Twin - we dated for a few weeks and well he was a twin (duh), but strangely enough he was also named Ben, he was my age and was pretty much the same height and weight as well. He did have a lot more hair than me. Bastard. Wish that one had gone somewhere though.

Hot Ash - a guy at the gym who strikes a remarkable resemblance to a random gay guy I know, but is much higher on the hotness scale.

On reflection, it was a really horrible thing to do. Espeically to the boyfriends. It really showed a lack of respect for them. Maybe Karma is now in effect and is making sure I don't find a new man for my past cunty behaviour.

You dropped the soap...

I've been known to enjoy a drink or two. I've long been a fan of a 15-year-old single malt scotch, sipped carefully over ice on the deck while chatting to dad, while savouring the subtle flavours.

Civilized. Calm. Mature.

I've also been know to drink massive amounts of alcohol in a single sitting. Two weeks pay gone on happy hour at the Shamrock Hotel in Toowoomba? Sure. Vomiting out of a moving car as it travels through the intersection of Margaret and Ruthven streets in the old T-Bar? Yeah... did that too.

Civilized? Fuck no. Calm? Absolutely not. Mature? Oh, in-deedy no.

Sadly, most of my worst boozing happened while living in Toowoomba, and there is one night in particular that will go down as the absolute lowest point in my life....

It was my work Christmas party when I was gainfully employed by the Toowoomba City Council at the Aquatic and Fitness Centre about ten or eleven years ago. Way too many a scotch and dry, followed by gin and orange, followed by black Sambucca shots were imbibed by young and innocent Benji. Many hugs were given, and many declarations of undying mateship and love were proclaimed around the group.

All stock standard for my work colleagues at the time.

As with most of my drinking sessions, I only left when the cash in my wallet got dangerously low, and stumbled out the door in search of a hot dog and taxi ride home.

The hot dog was found easily enough (and came with bacon and cheese), and eaten as I stumbled down the street looking some way of getting home. Unfortunately I tripped on an imaginary rock, twisted my ankle and tumbled over into the gutter.

Classy as, especially when I stood up and realised I'd torn the knee of my trousers (I never used to wear jeans out in those days) and now had blood pouring down my leg. But the number of Sambucca shots I'd had stopped the pain from the ankle and my leg from dampening my mood. However, the combination of Sambucca shots and the bacon and cheese hot dog was not sitting too well in my belly, and the need to vomit became overwhelming.

So I now hobbled as quick as I could into the the gardens of a nearby church, bent over and let fly with the contents of my stomach. It was one of those monster chunders too. You know, the one that you will think will never stop coming.

I think I must have been onto hurl number 5 or 6 when I noticed a set of legs behind me. I turned around mid-spew and worked out the legs belonged to an old fat police officer. Unfortunately as I turned to face him, the vomit was still flowing out of my mouth and I managed to get my quite a lot of it on his shoes.

"Sir, are you OK?" Mr Policeman asked me. My reply was to fall down and spew some more, but thankfully that seemed to be the last of the vomit.

"Sir, why are you in these gardens?" he now asked. My head started reeling with the realisation that I could possibly be in the shit because of what I just did.

"I really needed to be sick and I didn't want to do it on the street," is what I tried to say as I stood back up, but I'm sure it came out as "I dsagrasd chunder dfbfbwerbewfbr fucken argfdgvbd meh" and then fell over again.

"Sir, I'm going to ask you to come with us." Oh fuck.

I did the only thing I could - just resigned myself to the fact that I was gonna spend the night in lock up. I didn't put up a fight. I didn't plead or whine or bitch or moan to them. I didn't get violent and aggressive. I just let them put me in the back of the cop car and take me away to the Toowoomba watch house.

I was processed with polite efficiency. They took all my details on a triplicate sheet of paper. I would get a copy for my records the next morning I was told. I was asked to remove everything from my pockets, my belt and my shoelaces. The next sound send a chill up my spine.

The snap of a rubber glove.

Any remaining colour must have drained from my face, and the guy with the gloves said "No, we're not doing a strip search, I just need to check all your pockets to make sure you don't have a weapon"

Whew.

My pockets were duly checked, my property was bagged and tagged and I was handed a blanket as I was herded down a corridor into a massive holding cell. Thankfully it was deserted. No one else but me, so I grabbed all the mattresses and tried to go to sleep in the corner.

After what felt like 10 minutes I was prodded with a steel capped boot. It was a different officer telling it me it was six in the morning and I had to leave. I had managed to sober up significantly and was now able to string full sentences together. "Ummm... will I have to go to court over this?"

"No. You could have been charged for what you did to his shoes, but it meant too much paper work," the guy at the desk told me as I put my shoe laces back on.

"How big is the fine?"

"You've been charged with being drunk in a public place, so there is no fine. You are very lucky."

I just nodded, put my belt on as quick as possible and got out of there ASAP to get to work by 7:30.

Like I said, lowest point in my life.

The magical, mystical, hypocritical power of 15

I'm not an overly superstitious guy. I don't get freaked out when I spill milk, black cats don't send chills up my spine, and I hate it when people feel the need to tap their heads when they say "touch wood". But the number 15 seems to have a some-what auspicious connection with my life.

Here's some examples;

15th December 1996 - I ran through a barbed wire fence on a motorbike and ripped my right leg to shreds. You can see a picture here.

15th December 2003 - Started my job with TAFE.

15th December 2003 - parents moved out of the family home into a much smaller place to fund their retirement.

15th March 2004 - my maternal grandfather drops dead of a massive heart attack while holidaying in Perth.

15th March 2005 - my third niece, Sarah is born, turning a sad occasion into a very happy one.

15th November 2007 - my paternal grandfather finally succumbs to lung cancer.

15th November 2008 - my cousin's son is born, once again turning a sad occasion into a happy one.

The only time I won any sort of significant money was on roulette. Yup, you guessed it, I played the number 15.

Oh and the last one... I currently weigh 15 stone (well 15.1459872 according to Google).

Like I said, I'm definitely not superstitious, but the number 15 comes into play way too often in my life to ignore it.

I think I might go get "15" tattooed down my back 15 times by a guy with the IQ of 15 who has just finished a 15 year jail term for selling cocaine to 15 year old school boys.

Not that I'm superstitious or anything.

Did it always taste like sweaty ball sack?

I attended a Christmas lunch at the local Thai restaurant with the HR department today and it was a lovely, civilised luncheon with my new team (ie - Benji didn't get trashed and vomit in the gutter).

I found it really strange that not a single drop of booze was consumed. I mean who has ever been to a dry Chrissie party for fuck sake? It's not like I was going to get tanked and go back to work and delete several hundred pays from the payroll system, but I really wanted a beer to wash down my prawn panang curry. But seeing as no one else did, I didn't want to be the naughty child and get my hand smacked.

Boring HR people.

The lunch was really nice though. The curry was perfect and had heaps and heaps of big prawns all the way through it. I had way too much when the training manager started trying to coerce me into having a dessert with her.

Fuck it. I'd already blown my calorie count on the curry, I may as well enjoy a dessert for once. So I decided to go for the deep fried ice cream with choc fudge sauce.

I haven't had deep dried ice cream since I was a kid. I remember getting it when we'd go out for a rare Chinese banquet with mum and dad's friends. It was always so crispy and coconutty on the outside, and always came with some whipped cream and a couple of lychee's for decoration and added flavour.

No matter how full I was from the banquet, I'd always make sure I'd have room for dessert.

So with those fond memories circulating through my mind, I started to salivate at the thought of my yummy yet totally unhealthy dessert. But what I got did not meet my expectations at all.

Sure it was a great big ball of golden deep fried ice cream, but it was just sitting on top of a dollop of sauce with no other garnish at all.

Presentation was lacking indeed.

Then when I got to taste it, my sweet child hood memories were completely dashed. It really tasted like a sock had been deep fried in diet cordial covered in dry skin flakes from your grandmothers stockings.

Not happy at all.

So has anyone else had a child hood memory ruined by a modern encounter? I need to know that it's not just me that has a fucked up recollection of the past.

Seven years later...

September 11, 2001 was a very sad day. I wasn't there, I didn't know anyone who was killed, but it really hit me hard, and it still does.

I was up late, watching TV, when Sandra Sully came on with breaking a news - a plane had hit the World Trade Centre. The footage they showed was frighteningly graphic. You could hear the fear in Sully's voice.

What the hell was going on? Was America under attack?

Yeah... it definitely was.

Then the second plane hit. Then the reports came through about the Pentagon, and the plane that crashed outside Pennsylvania, reportedly on the way to the White House.

Thanks to the news coverage, I saw some things that will stay with me forever. People covered in blood and ash. People screaming and sobbing on the street. People jumping out of windows in the towers because they knew the fires would kill them. Falling to their death was a better fate than burning. I saw the first tower collapse on live TV.

It changed our lives for ever.

It made us scared. It made us suspicious. It made us not trust anyone or anything that is slightly different.

It's made the world a scary place to live.

Seven years later, I still can't watch/read/listen to stories about 9/11 without choking up.

Ekka time comes to an end...

I was catching a bus home this morning from last night's date (yes it went well) and was shocked to see that the Ekka has already finished. All the rides are being torn down, and once again I didn't go along.

I haven't been to the Ekka since I was 15 years old - I went with my first girlfriend Fran and my best mate Matt and I used to love going only for the rides. The scarier the better really. The Zipper, the Turbo, Rock n Roll - basically anything that turned me upside down and threw me around everywhere was gonna get my pick.

Have you noticed that the rides at the Ekka over the years have been getting more and more extreme? The dodgem cars and the gravitron not good enough for today's youth? We now have things called "Insanity", "Power Surge" and "Mega Drop". I'm pretty sure they had a bungee bullet there this year (where you sit in a cage and they fling you up on two massive rubber bands). They are intense rides, not designed for little kids surely?

But I remember being thrilled with scary rides as a kid though. We used to jump off our 2nd floor balcony onto cushion on the grass below, so scary rides were definitely high on my agenda.

We went to Dreamworld when I was four - this was back in the days before the giant drop and tiger island. Hell they didn't even have any water slides or anything. The first ride we went to go on was the Thunderbolt. It's been torn down now, but at the time it was the biggest and best roller coaster in the country.

So Dad, my brother and I all lined up for this roller coaster, and straight away an attendant went "Hey... he's too small to ride". And I flipped out. Chucked the biggest tantrum on the planet. I was going on this ride no matter what.

This is a photo from that day - I found it at mum and dad's last week and scanned it in... I'm on the left with my brother (and yes we are wearing matching ET tank tops!)

They made me stand up against the "You must be this tall to ride" sign and I was way under it. Still, I continued to scream. A nice lady tried to calm me down by saying "I think the merry-go-round would be a more fun ride, don't you?". I must have given her the biggest death stare a four-year-old could muster. Mum just shook her head and said "No, he just wants to go upside down.". But it did stop me screaming - I think i realised my futility and just gave up.

Needless to say, I didn't get to ride the Thunderbolt that year - and I definitely didn't go on that fucking merry-go-round.

Damages... motorcycles and barbed-wire fences don't mix

I am a very accident prone boy. Maybe its because I have such a bad sense of balance, or perhaps I am inherently lazy, and take too many shortcuts and manage to hurt myself. Unknown reasons really.

There have been quite a few semi-major injuries that have led to some lifelong problems now - mainly lots of sprained ankles. They are so weak that I can sprain them standing still (a la my sister's wedding).

But the most amount of damage I caused myself involved a motorbike, a hangover, and no ability to ride said motorbike.

A group of uni friends all went out to one girls family cattle property near the Canarvon Gorge in western Queensland close to Christmas. We all arrived and set up camp, and started drinking, talking crap and shocking each other with a cattle prod (it really fucking hurts btw).

The next morning I proclaimed that I was gonna learn how to ride a motor bike. "Sure, we'll show you," said the host family. So they took as all out to the air strip and let me get on the bike. "Here's the accelerator, here's the brake, here's the clutch," they demonstrated... and I was away.

I managed to get in two laps of the air field. At a very respectable speed. No wobbles, so crunching of gears or over revving. I was doing very well considering it was my first time.

"Go do one more so we can get a pic," called out some one, so I complied and turned it around for one more shot. Except I got stuck on a muddy ditch, beside the air strip and accelerated too hard. I suppose a bit of panic set in because I saw that I was getting very close to the fence, but I got confused and instead of braking, slammed into the fence, continuing to drag the right side of my body along it for around 50 metres.

Needless to say... I did some damage. Four strands of barbed wire, four fairly major areas of damage to my body. Right bicep, stomach, knee/calf and upper thigh (stopping just beside my peen).

And here's a picture...

Because we were in the middle of nowhere, it took two and a half hours to get to a hospital, and then it took almost three hours to stitch me up. There were 85 stitches to the knee/calf/thigh.

I then spent the remaining 10 days of the holiday stuck at the homestead while everyone else went off hiking and swimming in creeks.

Quite possibly the worst holiday ever.