4OE

The next part of the evening became quite weird and awkward quite quickly. I noticed that the music was off and everyone was inside listening to someone speak. I walked inside and one bloke stood before the crowd talking about his brother who'd passed away the week before in the very bathrooms of The Cambo from overdosing on pills. I listened in interest as people chatted over this guy, who was struggling to hold back his tears. Some people were crying up the front, but the pricks up the back (just like at any party where someone tries to give a speech to really drunken people too late into the night) were rudely laughing and mumbling 'funny' comments to each other. I found it extremely strange.

    Straight after the brother was done blubbering, as in seconds after, the music was turned back on a dance-floor formed. The publican came up and flicked the light-switch next to me which painted the front bar in a funky, green and purple display of four slowly spinning lights – real top quality lighting gear.

    “That was weird.”

    “Yeah,” he said. “The fucken blokes an idiot. The only reason why I let him speak is because he's in with the footy club, and that, you know? But he's a bloody dumb-cunt drug dealer. He sold his brother those drugs and he just cooked himself in the bathroom. His brother was a dumbarse too, just a good footy player when he was younger, but.”

    “Fuck,” I said.

    I realised why the guy hadn't really mentioned the drugs, and he certainly didn't tell anyone not to consume them. All he said was: “look after each other when you go out and get pissed, and stuff.” He's not going to tell his customers not to buy his wares. He's obviously not an idiot.

    You probably think that this would be the perfect time for my foot-in-mouth disease to flare up, but thank fuck that it didn't. I was actively trying not to talk if I could avoid it. I thought that an under-thought comment about the death of a loved one might be potentially something that could very harshly offend somebody to the point that they might want to inflict some heavy doses of physical pain upon me.

    I didn't speak again until I sat back down outside and engaged a pair of older, bedraggled looking women. They were mother and daughter and about fifty-something and thirty-something respectively. It was hard to tell though, because their faces resembled the knot's of big, old trees. The mother kept talking about how she just wanted one of these younger boys to pay attention to her and her daughter kept staring at me with wide-eyes like Mixy the rabbit from The Ferals. She was swooning, I guess, but I ignored her. I was busy trying to tell the mum to stop being so pessimistic, even if she had lived a shittier life than a ringworm.

    Eventually the older one asked me through toothless gums if I “smoked the ganj”. “You know what the ganj is?”

    “Yeah,” I said. “I just smoked a joint in my room not long ago.”

    “Well. Are you inviting us up for a smoke then?” her daughter asked me.

    Ummmmmm...

    The group who'd been the last to use the snowboard came up to the table. They were the woman's sons and grandsons. One was the kid who I'd verbally puked on earlier. It turns out that the woman I'd been telling to stop being so pessimistic was the local Aboriginal matriarch. Her eldest son, the bloke in the pink, plastic top hat, was a drug-dealer, and she called him over, asking me what I needed. I quickly made it obvious that I didn't want to buy any drugs, and the guy stood next us, looking at me through severely fucked-up eyes. I didn't know what to think of it at the time, but he must've been thinking, “Why the fuck is this bloke talking to my mum and sister in this pub full of girls?” I came to the same realisation and left the table, heading towards the bar near the dance-floor. I met the publican there, and he poured me a beer. Then as we yelled at each other over the horrible music, Newport girl came out from the crowd and pulled me into it.