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The fourth day of my ‘real estate promotion guy’ job at the Southland complex. It’s been copied verbatim and has not been altered in any way, hence the grammatical mistakes and poor expression. Each number corresponds to a page in the A4 note book I used to write all this rubbish in.





Sun 27/06/2004



1.



9:09am   ‘Coffee HQ’ at Flinders St Station…

10:26am  Just finished reading “Shampoo Planet”…



“What are you listening to?” asked the guy at ‘Coffee HQ’, whilst making me a tall Irish Coffee Latté.

“Hallucinogen” I reply, anticipating a blank face and an instant end to this episode of ‘idle store-keeper chatter’.

“Oh yeah? I like that song ‘LSD’” he offers almost instantaneously.

“It’s on the album I’m listening to” I snap right back casually, concealing my genuine surprise that this guy actually knew who or what ‘Hallucinogen’ is.

“Where you headed today?” he continues, knowing his foot is now well inside the door. ‘Coffee HQ’ is one of those hip and popular train station franchises that capitalize on the busy schedule or laziness of the commuters, knowing they’re either too busy or can’t be bothered walking across the road to get the same product at half price.



“Southland” I reply.

“Yeah? What’s there? Work?”

“Yep.”

“What do you do there?”

“I sit at a desk all day, promoting some real estate development.”

“You wanted an extra espresso shot, right?”

“Yeah… I need it. It’s hard to stay awake when only four or five customers approach you in an eight hour day.”

“Shit! Really? I couldn’t hack that… I need to talk to people all the time.”

At this stage I started wondering if he was one of those club-all-night-work-all-day-sleep-in-the-evening people. His knowledge of psy-trance, the over-enthusiastic personality? Seemed like certain motivating molecules were circling around his nervous system. Not a bad life really. Just think about it. You’d go to work full of beans everyday. No having to drag yourself out of bed to the noise of some ghastly squeal of a cheap alarm clock. Just straight from the dance floor and in to work, still high on amphetamines and adrenalin.



2.



10:57am     “TORTURE HOWARD

                  NOT IRAQIS” read the graffiti on the toilet.



Above the automatic hand-dryer a framed poster of ‘Peter’ and ‘Karen’, with their toothpaste-advertising-worthy smiles, assure me that they’re “… here to help you!” Peter, a clean shaven Ken-doll security guard with a chiselled chin fit for CNN broadcasting; Karen, the shopping centre attendant, a wholesome looking suburban mother with bright red lipstick matching her red ‘customer service’ uniform.



So much potential information in such a small space. Shopping centres are Mecca’s of personal histories, floating around chaotically, yet rarely colliding with somebody else’s personal history, so they remain locked within their vessels.



Sometimes when I sit here and stare out into the passing crowds, locking my gaze on each passing face for the milliseconds required to focus on their features, I not only wonder who each and everyone of them are, but more importantly, who they were. Where did the old bearded man’s grandfather take him fishing when he was a young boy? What drove the shoulder-padded business woman into a life of materialism? Did the two elderly couples who affectionately greeted each other meet at a nursing home, or do they go way back, back in a time that now seems beyond grasp or comprehension for today’s generation?



I feel dizzy, thinking about the immense accumulation of memories streaming past me. A river of semi-filled hard drives encased in personalised boxes – each with their own stickers and post-it notes – gliding effortlessly past me. Me, the salmon who appears motionless swimming upstream at the equal speed of the current.

When I put my headphones on I feel like I’ve leaped out from the river, yet keeping the motionless appearance, only this time hovering in mid-air, just above the river.



3.



Every time I see a baby on a restraining lead I’m forever reminded of Uncle Herb’s baby translator: “This leash demeans us both.”



This life well it’s slipping right through my hands

These days turned out nothing like I had planned

Control, well it’s slipping right through my hands

These days turned out nothing like I’d planned  - sings Bernard



But he adds “Soon enough it comes”. And it does. Like Stephanie in “Shampoo Planet” pointed out: Life is soon. It doesn’t wait for you to get your shit together, so you can enter it prepared and on course of your chosen path. It doesn’t allow for long-term planning to materialise in its fully intended conception. It just happens, and sweeps you along with it, and the best thing you can do is relax your muscles to avoid whiplash, and just try to enjoy the ride.



And to think I have another four days of this ‘work’ to go. I feel like my “Shopping Centre Diaries” have hit a peak, and it’s only going to be a steep decline from here on end.



11:47am  Time for a CD change.



Sit on the edge of the plastic chair, let the ass and thighs breathe. Sitting in the same chair for eight hours is smelly business, it is imperative you shift positions to minimise the stink potential of suffocated, sweaty body parts.



I am smelling like a rose that somebody gave me on my birthday death bed

I am smelling like a rose that somebody gave me cause I’m dead and bloated  - sings Scott.



Dé ja vù.



4.



12:03pm  Decided to start reading “Lullaby”, but only after peeling off the “Hot Price $4.99” sticker, out of respect for the author. I did so, only to reveal a

“Paperbacks

2 for $20

*selected stickered items only

while stocks last” sticker. Poor Chuck, been downgraded from one bargain bin to the next. I anticipate this is more due to the ignorance of the average shopper of these commercial chain-bookstores, and not because of any inferiority on the book’s behalf. Well, better go peel that second sticker off now.



13:02pm  Well if yesterday was a record-breaker for consumer interest in resort development, then today will surely be a record-breaker in disinterest. Haven’t got a single name yet, having only had to take my headphones off three or four times to explain the development location to curious bypassers.

Sunday shoppers. A completely different mindset to that of the Saturday shopper. I know how consumers think, or, perhaps more importantly, how they don’t think. The erroneous assumptions of university marketing graduates, who’ve been force-fed consumer theories from “leading” experts, who wrote their text books two or three archaic decades ago, would never be assumed in my department. I wouldn’t employ people based on training or credentials, I’d employ them based on their perceptive abilities, their understanding of human nature.

Not that I’d ever stoop so low.



I have a moral conscience to uphold, however degenerative it may be. I think it’s worth preserving the few specks of humanity left inside of me.



5.



13:23pm  Was gonna celebrate my first “customer” by having lunch, but this may be a futile plan as there mightn’t be a “first customer” today.

Sunday shoppers remind me of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Room Lizards. Yeah, that’s how long I’ve been familiar with PC games. Scary, isn’t it?



Fuck it. Lunch it is.



14:01pm  Random thought: just occurred to me that I might be better off not studying ‘writing’ at university, considering I’d probably just be disappointed with lecturers teaching me the ‘traditional’ and ‘correct’ ways to tell a story. I think today’s modern reader, well at least the youthful component, get bored easily with ‘traditional’ literary styles. They need chaotic and random representation in order to keep their attention span from getting bored. Chronic boredom, after depression, is the new plague of the modern world. These readers need five or six changes of subject per page, like a cluster of TV advertisements, but the only difference being that each subject is somehow linked to the core subject of the book. Like a Tarantino movie. Besides, to me, these days, there is no such thing as the ‘correct’ way. Well, spelling and grammar perhaps, yes… but as far as expression, chronology, voice and plot development – there is no such thing as ‘correct’.



14:14pm  Still not a single name. Sunday is a day of rest for the rich entrepreneurial investors. They’re at home polishing their tennis trophies, or making love to their trophy wives. Resting.



6.



14:33pm  First interested party. A new low record! Woo hoo! :o)



I need to buy myself some whitening smoker’s toothpaste. My excessive coffee drinking is beginning to destroy my teeth! Speaking of which, I sure could use some caffeine right now. Forgot to ask P** for a new supply of dexters last night, so I’m having to endure this long and dreary day on caffeine alone. Lucky I went to bed ‘early’ last night, giving me about six hours sleep; more sleep than I’ve had any night since last Monday.



15:15pm One hour and forty-five minutes is not usually considered a long time. Most Hollywood flicks run at about this length of time. It’s about the length of time you’re at maximum altitude on a flight to Sydney. It’s less than the average amount of time allotted to university exams, which seem to whiz by you, finishing long before you’ve finished answering your essay questions.

Yet for a man with a hyperactive brain, sitting alone at some real estate promo desk in the middle of a shopping centre, one hour and forty-five minutes seems an infinitely long time. Especially when he’s in desperate need of a caffeine fix.



I think the initial babe-factor shock of this job has now long worn off. But having only spent my working life in male-dominated industries and offices that had babe-factor readings of zero, it’s no surprise that my hormones took hold of me and guided my thoughts.



Well, I did work as a bouncer in an R&B nightclub once, filled with lots of sexy women in sexy outfits, but being the only sober person surrounded by drunken sleaze was kinda off-putting. The way these materialistic women grovelled around the feet of the druglord gangsters also didn’t do much to fuel any potential erotic fantasies.



7.



15:40pm  One hour and twenty minutes: The available space on the blank CD’s I purchased in a 50-stack bundle from JB Hi-Fi for $19.95; The theoretical length of an AFL game, which is divided into four twenty minute quarters (actual game, of course, with time-on, quarter and half-time breaks, running at over two, sometimes three, hours); the time it takes light emitted from the sun to travel about 2.16 billion kilometres – almost the distance from the Sun to Uranus; The time I have to sit here, looking like a buffoon, being of no use to all those morons who equate my public exposure with a general knowledge of the complex.



15:55pm  Sixty-five minutes: The length of “The Downward Spiral”, which I’m now going to put on, and then continue reading “Lullaby”. Goodbye!



I am the voice inside your head (and I control you)  - sings Trent.