Author Archives: justin

It’s official. The novelty of being single has worn off. Chance encounters of intimacy are being chalked up as vacuous and desperate. The 3am party/bar deal-sealing perve scan is clumsy and unfulfilling. On cold Friday nights there is a lonely patch on the couch where a cuddle-savvy girlfriend should be – a giggling navigator for a rally course of DVD’s – not this calculated scrolling through names in a mobile address book – a photon blast of desire condensed into a sprinkling of digital tickets in the casual sex lottery.

Booty call. For anyone not familiar with the term, this is when you ring up someone, usually late at night, purely because you want to sleep with them. I have been guilty of this. Well, it was more of a vague, rambling, inconclusive booty text. (The kind Mr Darcy would have written, if they had mobile phones in Pride and Prejudice) I find the term categorically hideous – my ex-Christian super ego, unable to accept that complex sensitive me could stoop to such blatantly lame pseudo-sleazy pop culture predictability, only contacting someone because I wanted to ‘pat them like an animal.’ No, no – it’s not about that – it’s about meeting up in a raucous bar and having nervous half-conversations that trail off, and spending $50 on alcohol, and ultimately getting really tired because it’s 2am and you don’t have the courage to say what you really want. That you want to be Captain Intimate with someone and at the end of the day it’s only physical.

*Sigh*. I was born with enough hormones to power a queen-size planet. The axis of my heart oscillates with such terminal velocity, that luminous rainbow vapours spiral through my eyes like galaxy tides.

You know those nights where you feel so lonely you could die?

Someone once said that sex is never purely physical, no matter who you’re with, and that no one-night-stand is devoid of emotional attachment. At the time I agreed, though I’m not so sure these days. I had my idealism towards ‘romance’ burnt out of me temporarily by the electro-shock intensity of a couple of emotionally manipulative relationships – coupled with increased personal confidence through my own performance art – for the last three years I’ve been able to enter the once pathologically daunting singles scene and tailor my own emotional output to enjoy the improvisational lust-theatre without too many murky spiritual hangovers.

I was once alerted to the rumour that I act awkward and lonely to get girls to sleep with me. I took the accusation rather heavily – and internally allowed myself a brief, half-bitter chuckle at the notion that someone who had vowed to be with one woman for the rest of his life had ended up with the street credibility of an indie-nerd Hugh Hefner. My only response was ‘what if I really am awkward and lonely?’

Along the way, I have found myself utilising the disclaiming mantra of ‘I’m not really looking for a relationship at the moment,’ which seems like a valid, earnest, get out of jail free card, until you think about it for a second – what a flimsy concept! All it means is ‘If I liked you enough, I’d try and have a relationship with you, but I obviously only like you enough to sleep with you,’ it’s a terrible, but true, premise.

The blurry, ambiguous, confusing ‘seeing each other’ scene has been an intriguing and tumultuous vortex for the last three years, but it’s something I feel I’ve outgrown. I want comfort. Stability. Waking up with someone smiling at me who loves every cubic centimetre of my soul – and who I feel like I’ve known for years.

Vive la girlfriend!

NOTE: In a nod towards professional integrity, the name of the DJ has been omitted.

I just went to my first wedding. At twenty-six, for a long time I had been the oldest person I knew who had never been to a wedding, this drought due to a tiny extended family and emotionally disorganised friends. (I just sneezed and now there’s a small galaxy of rainbow stars on the screen, I just smeared them into a whirlpool with my t-shirt) Finally one of my best, long-term school friends set a date for her ceremony to be held on a beach – in southern Tasmania – in the middle of winter. Apparently it was easy to book.

The groom said the night before he had prayed to Buddha and emailed [email protected] asking for nice weather, and sure enough his e-prayers were answered by clear skies and a surprisingly mild fourteen degrees. The groom’s father and sister performed ‘Even When I’m Sleeping’ as the bride and her father appeared on the sand. My heart sped. There’s something about seeing your friend in ‘that’ white dress – her face a picture of graceful excitement Their relationship of seven years had graduated. Their love was strong, intelligent and optimistic, and I was warming my hands in the glow, as waves swelled and crashed from behind.

The vows were show-stopping. The pair had penned their own and seemed to ad-lib them from within a force-field of joy. “You are my easter, you are my christmas, you are my chocolate, you are my television. You’re the one I’ve been waiting for, I will love you until the sea runs dry and the world stops turning – ps, you’re hot.” The ceremony was a fitting blend of wackiness (when the bride first walked out, the groom went to give her a kiss, before realising he wasn’t allowed to yet) and inspiringly sure-footed emotional honesty. Yeah, I had tears in my eyes – in a blokey way.

Trouble came late in the evening through the music practitioner aptly titled ‘DJ ****.’ DJ **** had come for free, a gift from the groom’s work. For most of the evening, he had been playing generic, nondescript background techno. Having miraculously slipped in one Bob Evans song, we became aware he at least had an ‘alternative’ section. After strolling behind his speaker fortress I queried him on his tastes, suggesting some Beck, Eels and Belle and Sebastian. He typed away furiously on his laptop, eying me nervously and suggesting he might be stretching his resources. I assumed this meant he only had about six songs that weren’t completely shit.

DJ **** redeemed himself later in the evening with an impassioned if not slightly unsettling ‘puppet display’ featuring him manipulating and voicing Grover and Ernie hand-puppets from behind his booth, much to the wonderment of the kiddies and particularly hammered adults. After the bridal waltz, **** launched into a 70’s/80’s dancefloor assault, complete with indecipherable narration between songs despite strict instructions from the bride and groom ‘never to talk.’ I thought about remonstrating, but by this stage **** was wearing a peaked cap, with ‘DJ ****,’ written on it, so I figured he’d been through enough.

Late in the evening, a wobbly, creamy moon appeared above the sea, so the bride and groom collected a few of us and dashed out to have a quick dance in the moonlight. About fifteen of us held hands as the bride and groom thanked the ‘special ones’ for coming. Watching them waltz, barefoot and freezing, I thought the idea of true love was similar to what I’d been taught in my creative writing degree.

Show don’t tell.

I’ve just passed my ten year anniversary of smoking – rewarding myself with a burnt ash cake, complete with tar cream and nicotine icing, with one lit cigarette in the middle which I can’t quite gather the lung capacity to cough out. My only wish? To quit.

I compare my addiction to cigarettes to that of a rocky long-term relationship with a fiery lover. We met behind the high school gym in 1996. She had a dangerous reputation, and I’d often seen her hanging around with the rebellious older kids, in their dark jeans and dirty jackets. When my friend Danny offered to introduce me to her, I was apprehensive yet powerfully intrigued. Against the grey pastels of a fading Saturday afternoon, I held the boutique-blue treasure box, fumbled with a lighter, and soon found myself engaged in a frantically long kiss from heavenly hell. My hands swooned. My lips sizzled. My head sang with merry-go-round dream liqueur. I was coughing with smiles. She was dark and lovely. Smooth and philosophical. She caressed her nutritiously intoxicating fingers across my virgin lungs. Her smell was on my clothes, in my hair, through my veins. Danny, later, partly saw to that, with a can of rexona and the questionable advice of rubbing dandelions into my fingers.

In the early days I had to hide our affair from my Mum, and more dramatically, my girlfriend. I would cradle my forbidden love in the back-shed, or in the toilets at school. There was something about her soulful wisps that provided an artful smokescreen from the sandpaper bluntness of the world. A private cloud laced with silk spores that were able to latch onto the tidal blur of time-chaos and slow it down, allowing my thoughts to coil and interlock with the spiritual cosmos around me.

As time broke-free and motored on, I realised the extent to which my sacred-secret girl was not mine alone. She was gossiping in cafes, swearing in bars, pondering idly at bus stops, humming along to the radio at intersections. She could be wrapped around me, smirking cheekily one moment, and dissolving like a chemical witch, the next. These would be periods devoid of passion, leaving just the empty bitterness of routine and a gloomy realisation that perhaps I needed her more than she could ever need me.

Over the years I would try and leave her. Cursing her memory as I powered along a swimming pool, committed to regaining my natural strength. At parties and bars she would taunt me, like a cunning ex, draping herself across my table, tickling my nostrils with a cruel, delicious feather. For at least six months, I remained defiant, yet despite my small army of self-empowerment, I was unable to resist the enemy campaign of academic deadlines, money troubles and relationship upsets, and sensing the aftermath of my emotional wars, she would swoop in, breathing my men back to life with her thick, medicinal poetry.

And now, our bi-polar union continues, swinging between joyous post-gig moonlight celebrations, and demoralising Monday afternoon fallouts, when I realise what I’m really clutching onto is the idea of escape, and a longing for meditation, and that her love is a cheap vindictive poison that tricks my senses and leaves me anxious and wanting.

There is a pain in my heart. I know this is going to be the hardest break-up of my life.

Growing up, you realise that it’s rare for things to turn out exactly how you want them to, and even rarer for your expectations to be exceeded. Most dreams don’t quite come true. Neither do wishes. Life is a bit too literal for that kind of whimsy. Except when it comes to one thing. One part of my life that has consistently surpassed my wildest dreams for the last five years. One part of my body that has remained a radiant lighthouse for the restless boat of my self-esteem. A stylish companion. A trustworthy friend. Praise be to the most inspiring and trailblazing of all my physical appendages.

Hail to the sideburns!

My sideburn obsession began in high school, when my best friend Billy and I would spend the best part of our social studies lesson creating visual glossaries of different kinds of sideburns. These included ‘Lamb Chops’ (standard), ‘Mutton Chops’ (slightly smaller than lamb chops), ‘Beef Chops,’ (kind of chunky), ‘Sideboards’ (thinner), ‘Grizzly Burns,’ (hairier than usual), and ‘Jagged Burns’ (ones that end in a point). Other favourite past-times were to draw sideburns on ourselves, or even just take two fingers, run them down our cheeks so they made the outline of a sideburn, and say the word ‘burns’ in an exaggerated manner while doing this. We were a two man side-burn appreciation society without facial hair.

Spotting a pair of quality sideburns in real life or on television was a time of celebration. We would giggle in awe and try and identify which category they fell into. Our hero was David Jason, who starred in a show at the time called ‘The Darling Buds of May.’ This was set in ye olde England, and David was fitted with tremendously maxed out lamb chops that could have fed a family of four for a year. Graham Garden from The Goodies and Wolverine were also key poster boys.

As the years and hormones have gone by, I’ve found that while my moustache and beard attempts are comical at best, since the age of twenty I have been able to grow my own healthy set of mutton chops. If I let them go, I can enter serious Grizzly Adams territory, with the sideburn hair growing to at least five centimetres in length. When they get that long my friend Matt says they make him feel ill. Sideburns aren’t for everyone.

Sideburns in aren’t generally in vogue, and are probably considered by many to be out-dated and daggy. If men do have them, they are often carefully styled and cropped neat and close to the face. That isn’t for me. I believe side-burns should be wild and untamed scourers of country jungle madness. They are like a pet for the face. When I’m anxious I often twiddle and stroke them and it makes me feel better. They are like squiggly woollen bookmarks holding my head together. I love my sideburns and I want them to know that I don’t take them for granted.

It’s overcast today. The air has a tinge of fridge door freshness as I walk along the street. (must be the Woolworths hopper I just passed.) Branches are restless, a man operates a whipper snipper on the nature strip while the dehydrating puddles are swished around by the wind, leaving vaguely mathematical spirals. I’m hung over and anxious. Something happened last night that really shouldn’t have. I try to ease my worries by telling myself that my life has always been about dramas at regular intervals but things always end up sorting themselves out. I catch a gust of pollen-ice air. My brain is submarine plunged in an ocean of memory cotton. I’m a child, somewhere in Tasmania, for a bit.

I stick out my hand half-heartedly, trying to attract a taxi. I am heavily short sighted, so it’s not until the taxi gets to a certain distance that I can tell whether or not it’s occupied. I don’t want to try and flag it down with too much enthusiasm in case there’s someone already in the front seat and I look stupid. It’s a flawed system. I can perform comedy on stage, but am wary of being deemed foolish by suburban taxi drivers and their passengers. I spit in the gutter and check my messages. A girl who was going to interview me today has postponed. I am relieved. I no longer have to rush to get home.

I’m sitting on the train, my brain switched to a mode that will not let me remember any of these blank faces for very long. Women – freshly showered hair, large sunglasses, red lips, legs crossed at ankles. Men – thinning hair, skinny jeans, peaked caps, paperbacks, dull eyes. I’m camped in the corner with a palpitating heart. I decide that it might be fantastic to have your own Oprah Winfrey style audience to follow you around everywhere. Scream incessantly when you first wake up. Laugh uproariously at your light humour. Clap self-righteously when you make overstated, earnest comments – and generally squeal like mentally handicapped children every time you end a sentence with the vocal equivalent of an exclamation mark.

Last night: Ripping chunks of Turkish bread…my flatmate might be grumpy…The best friend that left his move too late…there were penguins at Clovelly beach today…I need to go out with someone less like me…I need to go to the beach.

I’m almost home now. Clouds are jostling for position – squirming like suds beneath a glass plate. I’m a newspaper soup of alphabet ink, with the soundtrack of Beck’s remix album bleeping faintly in my i-noggin. I’m still not sure if it’s a brilliant album. It needs to be. It needs to fit neatly inside a box. Last night is in a box fastened by highways of tape.

Make sure I don’t forget my wallet and sunglasses. Fill up my water bottle. Silence at the doorway. Why do so many chapters end like this? Downcast eyes. Morning caution. Distance. I turn my back and imagine her crying already. The day smells rain-tinged and my vision refreshes with a wispy palette of whites and greens.

Sometimes, when I write ‘Love Just’ on the end of an email, I get an urge to include this disclaimer:

(Note: If you are uncomfortable with use of word ‘love’ please downgrade to ‘Cheers, Just’ If you are disappointed with the absence of xx’s . Please add them in your head.)

How much do you read into the x’s people put on the end of emails and texts? If a girl I’m remotely attracted to puts one on the end of an email I’ll get all excited. Then, if she puts the same x on the end of a group email, I’ll deflate somehow. Maybe there needs to be a new international sign for ‘a kiss and hug that isn’t my normal friendly kiss and hug but a more intimate kind of operation.’ I’m a culprit, so if you’re mildly attracted to me, don’t be deflated. I’m gonna spend all night up to my shoulders in wing dings looking for the right signs to say what I mean, muffin. (these are lyrics to a new folk ballad I’m writing.)

According to my mate Matt ‘More than 3 x’s and its sexual.’ While another pal Dion has concluded that three lower case x’s is just being heartily platonic, while xXx, means something more, especially in a text message, as the person has gone to more trouble. I personally find three lower case x’s more intimate than upper case X’s, and I’m not really sure what that says about anything exactly.

The combination of xoxo, is a vague, legal minefield. Going by the high school rule, x’s and o’s on their own are simply friendly symbalia, while an x inside an o means, to remain true to teen dialect, you want to root said person. Some textsmiths are want to be liberal with their xoxo smorgasboards, leading to all sorts of bewilderfusion.

One time I got a text from a girl I thought quite a lot of, which was concluded with a xoxo combination of between eight and thirteen characters, memory pending. Going by Matt’s aforementioned theory, one could be forgiven for adopting the crude translation of – ‘I want to be embroiled in a one-on-one weeklong spiritual Greco roman buddhist wrestling and horizontal line-dancing seminar in a Swedish sauna with you, plus shagging.’ Without going into detail, I, in a ‘commonsensically challenged’ state, attempted to scientifically determine the DNA coding of the data, through a simple test which included the vocalisation of a grammatically appropriate sentence made up of a combination of common Australian/English words including, but not limited to, ‘you’, ‘kissing’, ‘like’, ‘do’, ‘feel’ and ‘me.’ For the few integral seconds following the initialisation of the experiment, the subject’s blood pressure, breathing, eye movements, perspiration levels and kinetic permutations were all closely monitored. These readings, in conjunction with the subject walking away, led to an overwhelmingly conclusive result, and the entire experiment was batted away with the dexterity of a Federer forehand, much to the detriment of gonzo science.

To conclude the textual and emotional minefield which has no conclusion – I would like to nominate an alternative form of symbolised regards – to be used by boys or girls, such as this – ‘****#####’ which means ‘I have an extremely vivacious personality and ever-bubbling sense of warmth and affection for mankind, but I’m never, ever going to sleep with you.’ I’d also love to see a range of keyboard symbols for men. For example:

% = handshake
%%% = that awkward blokey hug blokes do where they slap each other on the back and don’t know where to put their heads.

And other general purpose combinations:

x$ = i’m not really that fond of you, but you’re good for cash.
xXx* = i would like to sleep with you, but by god i’ve got baggage.
##xx = i want to sleep with you when I’m stoned.
ooo = no kissing, I’m a prostitute.

Please feel free to offer your opinions, and nominations of potential international text message and email abbreviations in the forms provided below.

In December last year I attended the fuzzing ozrockapoolooza of ‘Homebake.’ The day began with an ill-advised meeting with one of my vaguest friends, Adam. We agreed to meet at Museum station, not taking into account that this particular train station has four different entrances. After a fidgety fifteen minutes, I went without him, as my friend’s band, ‘Pomo Mofo’ was playing at 11am. I never made it.

After forty minutes of indie shuffling, I was removed from the line by a NSW policeman. Police sniffer dogs had been installed, and the godlike mutt was taking a lot of interest in my shorts pocket. At first I thought it might have just been the packet of ‘Ovalteenies’ I had impulse bought earlier. Despite earnest pleas that I didn’t do drugs and hadn’t been at any parties where pot was in the air, I was asked to take off my shoes and socks, while a gloved hand fanned the contents of my pockets over the ground. The policemen then asked to look down the front of my underpants, adding that I had the option of saying no. I declined. “If we wanted to we could take you back to the station and strip search you, but we’re being generous today.”

After slipping sheepishly back in line, I received a hapless message from Adam. He had forgotten to bring my number with him, and was the last person I knew without a mobile. (Nan got one for Christmas) Astonishingly, he’d had to ring up his Mum in Wollongong and get her to drive twenty minutes over to his house, log onto his computer and find an email that had my number in it. I abandoned my place in line, and wandered back to find him. By chance, I found him standing next to a tree. Forty minutes later we were in the bakery. The sun was roasting. A rotating capsule suspended by two bungee chords was firing people into the air against the alien inner-city skyline. The Mess Hall grunged and crackled on the main stage. We ate noodle stuff while I stared at a kaleidoscope of summer frocks and supple female legs. God help me, everyone was nineteen – and making it look easier than I felt.

Music festivals always provide a smorgasbord of novelty T-shirts. Highlights included ‘Bring Back Bob” with a picture of Bob Hawke – “I’m not vegetarian but I’m off my chops” – “do I look like a fucking people person?” and a bloke who’s shirt just said ‘Cunt’ in big red letters. I bought an orange and purple sombrero, and at some point a bloke ran up to me and said into his phone ‘I’m just near the guy with the sombrero.’

Music highlights included: Patience from the Grates leaping about like a cross between Gidget, Patti Smith and Steve Urkel. The Go-betweens effortless coolness – the ‘la la’ refrain of ‘Surfing Magazines’ providing a dreamy summer cottage of simple joy. And The Dirty Three’s intro of ‘this is about when you’re going to a party and you ask a girl to come along but you realise you’re already dead. This is for anyone who is dead or dying,’ before launching into a splendid wrenching mess that made me cry at a live gig for the second time in my life.

On our way out, Adam and I were handed two plates of Hari Krishna vegetarian food for free. We sat on the grass and ate it. We couldn’t stop talking about how good it tasted.

New year’s eve can be a dazzling, charming, life-affirming celebration of the lovable mischief of friends, the heart-spicing marinate of alcohol and the star-blazing sense of grandeur and primeval humility that resetting the clock to O:OO:OO can bring. It can also be a moody, brain curdling shit-thicket. For Justin Heazlewood, the last two new years eve’s have been the latter.

He has spent them at the Falls Festival, a magnificent annual musical concert featuring a plethora of exciting bands. The Falls Festival is held at Marion Bay, a dashing sea side farming property in the serene depths of South-West Tasmania. For the last two years, Justin has been booked to play at the Falls Festival, a luxurious gig in any semi-established singer/songwriter’s book. He has been well received – his rambunctious free-fall comedic performances met with lapping waves of laughter and appreciation from the shiny-tipsy, demographic ambient. During his down-time, Justin has relished in the opportunities his backstage pass has provided, such as complimentary beers and opportunities to have rare, albeit ill-advised conversations with his musical peers. He has been able to share these experiences with his close friend Josh, who also performs at the festival, and a number of other cherished Tasmanian friends who admire and encourage him.

Mathematically, one would not have to be an expert in ‘good times’ to suggest that Justin’s new years eve ‘pie-chart’ should be 100% red, the legend reading: Red = Para-sailing through the electric sexfuel of magical youth. It is little wonder that Justin’s unnervingly consistent brown pie-chart marked ‘depressed out of fucking brain’ has left not only himself, but his liege of self-esteem scientists, baffled.

“My memory is tired and love-sick. Dream thighs in pink shorts. …crawling downwards… Sparkle-toe whirly girls. Beer-cropped patrol boys. Savage teen faces. Salty shadows. Guitar spew…deep-fried reverb saunas. Fly-blown arse-pocket hands and cackling bad comedy t-shirts. I’m a hornless unicorn being force fed burnt onion. Cinders of conversation. I’m late for the race, off my face on inner language. …trying to sleep/cry in my one-man tent while the Cat Empire echoes and fades through the daylight trees.”

Justin has been able to diagnose his dour mood as an ‘emotional hangover from a tumultuous year’ – a heady cocktail of girls, art and family. Justin believes that the sensory overload of the festival, in conjunction with the pressure of having to perform; fall out of mobile phone coverage, and social expectation that new year’s eve has to be the best night in world history heighten this hangover, leaving him feeling fragile, corrupted, alone and reeling at the darkly comedic juxtaposition of being so sad at such a glamorous event – traipsing aimlessly along his own self-maintained sideshow woe.

This new year’s eve, Justin will be tackling Falls Festival for a third year in a row, and has already released an optimistic press release to his own fear journalists. He considers 2005 a successful year that has provided him with a vital shot of personal confidence and that he’ll be able to spot the emotional bear trap a mile off. He hopes that everyone has a mirthful new year’s eve, but reminds them that if they have a crap one, not to feel like they’re all alone in the universe.