CHAPTER 1 #2
Bradley: Follow-up question re: do we have a broom, can vacuum cleaners suck up glass? That’s probably okay right
Harry: No! No!!!
Bradley: Omg fine. On a side note, if anyone wants any wine any time soon, they’re going to have to get some wine glasses, we’re out
Bastian: Are we doing shopping, we need toilet paper
As a veteran share-house dweller, Jeremy had long consigned his wine glasses’ souls to hell.
You couldn’t be precious in a share house.
This one was honestly pretty nice compared to some of the mould-infested shitholes littered with bearded men sitting in their underwear watching Becker DVDs at seven am in which he’d previously lived.
All his housemates were like him – cresting or post thirty, with real jobs, who wanted to live somewhere clean and drama free: a refuge.
The reality of the house was another matter, but it was the thought that counted.
He decided to ignore the chat, filing away the fragmented glassware in the long list of grievances he was having with today.
He went back to the Facebook invite, double-checking the date, and read over the scarce information again as if it would make any difference.
Then he bit his lip, took the plunge and looked at the guest list – a bunch of names he recognised, all pulled from the distant past. It didn’t take long before he saw the name he was looking for, sitting there like a sullen portent of yet more doom, acting innocent, camouflaged, like one of those deadly toxic fish that look like rocks.
Miles Martin. His ex-boyfriend. The person he hated most in the world.
‘Fuck!’ Jeremy yelled, closing Facebook. Nobody even looked up, they were so used to loud profanities coming from the editorial team.
‘Aww, you look sad,’ said Aiden, flouncing into the vacant seat next to Jeremy, where the editor of the publication was meant to sit.
Through the window Jeremy could see Vanessa wandering up the street holding a basket full of baguettes, looking like someone on a Parisian postcard had somehow got loose.
‘Urgh, do you ever feel like you made a wrong choice at some point, and because of that you’ve fucked up your life forever?’ he said, wresting his gaze back into the room.
‘Ah, a Sliding Doors , 1998 moment,’ said Aiden wisely. ‘You’re worried you’re the Gwyneth with the bad hair instead of the good hair.’
‘I am definitely the bad-hair Gwyneth,’ Jeremy moaned.
‘Aww, sad.’ Aiden sipped from a huge mug of Mixed-Berries Berocca. ‘It’s like how I tried to go the peroxide gay vibe, and it made my hair go piss yellow. But then it actually kinda slayed, so I went with it, even though it burnt my ears a bit.’
‘So, not really the same at all,’ Jeremy said.
‘The point is, maybe you should be happy with your bad hair,’ said Aiden. ‘Like, you’re a disgusting slut with no talent, but there are definitely worse people to be. You could be a YouTuber.’
‘Once again, please don’t call your almost boss a disgusting slut – and thank you, that’s actually quite nice for you.’
‘What brought this on? Are you reading the comments section on your articles again?’ asked Aiden. He took another loud slurp.
‘Wait, are you just being sympathetic so you don’t have to work?’ Jeremy asked, ignoring his shrug. ‘Look … it’s the worst thing that can happen to someone. A reunion.’
He pulled up the Facebook invite again, ominously titled: It’s time – The Parker Workshop alumni showcase, 2015.
He was sure there was also a glossy printed invite currently being eaten by snails in his mum’s letterbox, but right now Jeremy had to receive this psychic damage through Facebook, which really added insult to injury.
‘Oh no,’ said Aiden. ‘A high school reunion? I’m not going to mine.’
‘No, it’s worse than that,’ Jeremy explained.
The somewhat prestigious creative writing degree he had done, the Parker Workshop, was named after Dr Hector Parker, a patron of the arts (and, unfortunately, a pre-World War II Nazi sympathiser), and each year’s class – called a ‘workshop’ to further lean in to the pretension – was only around twenty people, simultaneously coddled and abused by staff into forming a tight-knit unit, competitive and supportive at the same time.
Jeremy hadn’t seen anyone from his year of the Parker Workshop for a long time.
The course had a lot of little traditions: Hogwartian flourishes like sorting hats and predatory academic staff (they joked through the trauma) who convinced the kids accruing a crippling amount of HECs debt, that they were going to be the next literary sensation, that they’d somehow write the next great American novel from Australia.
One of the most long-running of those traditions, which had been going since the eighties, was the alumni workshop showcase, where a graduating class was invited back to the university, feted and celebrated if they’d become something, ignored and pitied if not.
Jeremy remembered being overawed at his first showcase when he was a first year student, as a particularly famous novelist cried while thanking the workshop for making him who he was today, for all his success.
Jeremy had rubbed shoulders with big names in poetry and philosophy, writers across media and TV and film.
The arts minister at the time, a long-ago graduate, had wandered around shaking hands like he could steal souls through his palms.
‘It’s a big deal,’ Jeremy explained to Aiden. ‘The only thing worse than going and being a huge fucking failure is —’
‘The bad-hair Gwyneth,’ Aiden supplied.
‘Thank you for extending the metaphor, that’s exactly the kind of thing we were taught at the workshop. The only thing worse than going with your bad hair is not going – it’s like admitting you failed. It’s noted. You have to go. We used to make fun of anyone who didn’t turn up.’
It was basically a workshop-wide hobby to keep track of graduates – seethe at their success, laugh at their failures, and criticise their books for being derivative.
‘You should go. It will be fun!’ said Aiden, clearly bored by the conversation.
‘My ex will be there too,’ Jeremy said, a tremble entering his voice.
‘Oh … the one who …?’
‘Yep,’ Jeremy said. ‘That one.’
‘Ah.’ Aiden patted him only semi-mockingly on the shoulder. ‘Oh, I did come over to tell you that the butt-eating DJ has spoken out about eating the butt, so I’m writing about that. It’s actually quite a beautiful statement.’
‘Well, the news never stops,’ Jeremy said, swivelling back to his computer. ‘Anyone else feel like Doritos?’
He hovered over the Maybe button on the event again, then closed the invite.