I’d disagree with some of these positions (Pope Benedict in the penultimate position?! Come onnn, he has the fantastic dark evil eye look going on!) but not with Kevin Rudd coming in at #93. Nor Kim Jong-il coming in - wait for it - last. He deserves it. Weirdo.
I hadn’t been home for a couple of days, so I thought I’d catch up with my housemates.
Housemate: “I got baptised today.”
Me: “Oh… really?”
Housemate: “Yeah.”
Me: “Which religion?”
Housemate: “Christian.”
Me: “Oh. Ok. What sort of Christian?”
Housemate: “Er… I can’t remember.”
Awkward pause.
Housemate: “Something of God.”
Me: “… right.”
Housemate: “Have you been baptised?”
Me: “Yes. I’m technically Catholic.”
Housemate: “Ohhh. Catholic is bad. You worship idols.”
Me: “We do not! I mean they do not!”
Housemate: “Yes they do. When were you baptised?”
Me: “When I was a baby.”
Housemate: “Noo, not enough. You have to be baptised again.”
Me: “What?!”
Housemate: “Not enough! You have to be born again!”
My eyes widened with horror as I realised I was an agnostic living with a Sikh, a Hindu, a Muslim and an ex-Hindu born again evangelical Christian.
Who has been spending his school holidays proselytising at Preston Market, only to come home and try the same thing on his housemates.
Noooo!
Later he apologised. And ended the apology with “God bless you.”
I want to stab things.
I went out with the handsome man I met in my slippers and the fact was, I just didn’t like him very much.
He was handsome, sure. Not quite to the degree I said he was, but yes. Handsome. He was a catch, if I was shallow enough to want that - he spoke of six figure salaries and company cars and fancy bars and fancy food and threw money around like it grew on trees.
But it just made me feel a tad uncomfortable. “Very different,” I observed, “to my living on $40 a week.”
He stared at me blankly. “How can you even do that?”
Needless to say, we had little in common.
He asked me if I wanted to continue our bar hopping on Chapel St. I knew his house was around the corner from Chapel St. I ignored that.
“Sure,” I said breezily.
But as the cab carried us off I felt increasingly uncomfortable. In the bar, his local bar, the staff all knew him, and I became acutely aware of being that evening’s accessory, just that week’s girl. I didn’t like feeling that way. We talked a little longer, and when the conversation came to a halt I sensed a need for something to be done. So I said I thought I might go.
It had only been a couple of hours, if that. He might have been surprised. He said he thought we’d be staying out much longer or he wouldn’t have dragged me all the way to Chapel St, the other side of town for me.
“Mmm,” I said.
He gave me a somehow intimate kiss on the cheek, and I walked away.
In a way, it feels empowering to brush off a perfectly nice, handsome guy who’s society’s definition of a catch simply because you don’t want him. But what I felt more keenly was a sort of melancholy. I never realised how hard it was to actually connect with someone. I decided I didn’t like dating at all. I bought some hot chips (but could only eat a couple), a mini burger, and then a Twix, and sat morosely on the ground at Flinders St Station.
