Cannibals, Taxis and Fabulousness
One: Hello, Clarice
Friday night only comes to a close at 3 o’clock on a Saturday morning. It was around this time that our girl hobbled out of the club onto the curb to wait for a cab home. She thought wearing flats instead of heels would enable her to practically skip all the way back home after five hours of dancing to bad music and running away from a German boy in a black fedora whose idea of kissing wasn’t all that different from eating a cheeseburger – all sinking teeth and chewing. In theory, wearing flats was certainly a wise option. Only her ballet flats, as cute as they looked with its little white polka dots ala something out of Sienna Miller’s wardrobe, pinched and chafed her big bulbous toes, her wide feet with the permanent flip-flop tan-line and one missing toenail that was a result of an unfortunate accident with a slamming door. She considered taking off her shoes but upon glancing at the puke-covered pavement, made sparkly with bits of broken beer bottles, she decided that some amount of pain was worth not stepping into someone’s regurgitated vodka and kebab.
Our girl’s two housemates, lets call them Anna and Sylvie were with her but each with grievances all their own. Anna had taken off her shoe earlier, a rather threatening specimen of four-inch heels, to throw in the direction of her boyfriend who had left in favor of an early night in alone at his own place so he would be able to be up early to surf. “Fuck you, FUCK YOU maaaan and your fucking waves!!!!!!” she yelled at the spot where her boyfriend said his goodbye for the night and now only a lamppost stood, erect and unspectacular.
“Oi, look, that chick’s talking to a pole!” said a passing drunk person who must have thought he made for an exemplary citizen himself.
Sylvie was trapped in a conversation with a bunch of guys from
Good to know that the French sometimes consider themselves as average as the rest of the world but truth be told, our girl wasn’t even listening. The less than stellar sound system at the club had messed with her hearing a bit. It didn’t help that she spent a considerable amount of time hiding behind the speakers to escape aforementioned German BiteMeister who was cute but alas, must have mistaken our girl for a piece of chewing gum meets childhood pacifier.
“Hey, what happened to the cutie you were with earlier?” Anna asked, visibly calmer after venting her frustrations at an innocent lamppost which now bore the scars of her femme fatale shoes.
“Whaaaat?”
“I said, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CUTIE YOU WERE WITH EARLIER?!!”
“Whaaat?”
“WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CUTIE YOU WERE WITH EARLIER???!!!”
“Yeah, she wants to know what happened to the cutie earlier! I’m here!” a passing drunk person piped in, uninvited, before swaying on his merry drunken way down the avenue after Anna threatened to fling her one remaining shoe at him.
“Oh, him. Meh,” our girl said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Why? He was really into you.”
“He was into cannibalism.”
Two: Surfer’s
3. 30 am and till standing at a taxi stand on a street in Surfer’s Paradise, our girl was starting to wonder what the point to these empty nights of partying was exactly when at that moment, she could have been snugly and comfortably buried underneath a blanket, soundly asleep in bed after devouring a box of Tim Tams while watching Big Brother Up Late in the comfort of her pajamas and blister-free bare feet. Right, that was the point. Still, what did she have to show for a night out? An empty wallet, blisters and the feeling as if she had been chewed out and spat out by a bear. A bear in the form of a German in a fedora hat.
She wondered if the strip of hotels, clubs, and assorted tacky tourist traps known as Surfer’s
“Where are all the taxis?!” Sylvie asked no one in particular, just as Our Girl jumped to the middle of the road at the sight of what she thought was an oncoming cab. Only it turned out to be a police car. That was the problem with police cars in
The police officers snorted, then laughed then looked entirely pissed off before driving off. Yes. If there was anything worse than a uni student on a Friday night/ Saturday morning it was an international uni student on a Friday night/ Saturday morning; heck, it’s a plague worse than tourists.
Three: Rock the Unibrow
3:45 a.m. and our girl along with her housemates Anna and Sylvie had finally secured themselves a cab which our girl initially mistook for a police car. The driver was unusually chatty for someone who had to work at 3 o’clock in the morning. “So, you girls are students at the uni, eh? What are you studying?”
“Psychology,” answered Anna.
“I’m doing my MBA,” answered Sylvie.
Our girl didn’t answer, not out of intentional rudeness but she was engrossed in her own thoughts. By now, she was so tired that her thoughts went beyond that of just going home and going to bed. Her thoughts were of going somewhere, in a bigger picture, life sense and then her thoughts just went everywhere. She ended up thinking of a black and white photo of Francoise Hardy she saw in a magazine once, perched on top of a motorcycle, looking tough yet elegant all at once. Of Frida Kahlo – charismatic, hypnotically alluring and sensual, passionately working away in her studio, rocking the unibrow like it were a crown of jewels. Our girl thought of all those women who were iconic yet could not be imitated, of women that seem to live and live or will live beyond their lifetimes, some of which even made mental instability and being tragic, strangely desirable. Our girl sometimes considered herself tragic (though in truth, she wasn’t so much tragic as she was unfortunate, where her unfortunate personality resulted in ungrateful behavior, dissatisfaction, self-pity and the occasional stubbed toe) but she reckoned she wasn’t tragic enough to be iconic, just enough to be laughed at. And then she wondered if she was really even funny-tragic or simply melodramatic because melodrama is only funny because it’s rather pathetic. And then she started to worry at the possibility that she might be pathetic. And that made her, undeniably, pathetic.
“…..So, what do you girls plan to be after graduating?” the cab driver’s voice began to slowly filter back into Our Girl’s head.
“I already have a job lined up as a counselor at a rehab centre,” Anna answered. A joint was sticking out of her side jeans pocket.
“Go into business, become rich!” Sylvie answered.
“And what about you?” the cab driver said to our girl.
“Who? Me? Oh….uh…,” Our Girl never quite had an answer ready for these things. She thought of the matter plenty of times before but she never could decide on anything in particular. She said ‘teacher’ to please her teachers. She said ‘lawyer’ to please her parents. She said ‘rock star’ to piss them off. She said ‘journalist’ to justify her current field of study. She said ‘writer’ cause she had a blog. She said ‘tai tai, lady of leisure’ for amusement’s sake. And she said ‘don’t know’ to end the discussion.
And then it hit her, like a high heeled shoe to Anna’s boyfriend’s back; she quite simply, wanted to be… “Fabulous. I want to be fabulous.”
The cab driver broke out in laughter.
Epilogue
Anna is currently in the States, back in her hometown of
Sylvie is still in the Gold Coast and has embraced the fact that being French makes her special. She still hasn’t accepted anyone’s request for a French kiss. She studies and works hard and is definitely on her way to becoming rich.
After developing an irrational fear of most men with teeth, Our Girl now spends every night at home watching bad television. She’s still working on being fabulous although only time will tell if she’s on the right path. Right now, she just wants someone to tell her where the remote is.
She is sitting on it.
