The Liquor Lounge

Two minutes from where I work and where I start every day with a swim. Chilly at 0715 in the morning. Couldn’t be much more than 25C. I’d prefer 26C!!!!

Pete is perhaps responsible for one of the greatest lines of the 1990’s. I was back stage at a club where he and his mates had just finished a strip show. He was the last act and when he finished, we went back into the change room together as he & I had a party that we needed to get to. We walked into the room and there was a mid-sized orgy taking place in front of us. This was not a particularly unusual occurrence, it must be said. The first words out of Pete’s mouth were “which of you birds has got a spare hole?” He has never lost that kind of charm!

But tonight at approximately 0200hrs (being both Valentine’s Day and his birthday, naturally) Pete will be declaring himself off the market. He is proposing to a girl that he has known for 9 weeks. She has wealthy parents – enough said!

He was telling me that he’d asked her how many guys she’d slept with; a question that I really couldn’t understand, given that he has always been one of the biggest sleazebags that I know. The all pervasive and hypocritical tentacles of middle class morality I suppose. He said he that he thought if the number was 30 or less he’d be happy. When she replied “8” he couldn’t believe it. So he is satisfied on that count, now he is simply scheming on a variety of ways to con her father out of some money!

So tonight I have to duck away from another friend’s engagement party and preposition a bottle of chilled champagne, some glasses and a rug down at Cremorne Point (beautiful views of the harbour, the bridge and the Opera House) before making myself scarce. My place is only a short stroll away and they’ll make their way back here where her twin sister (not identical Steve, I asked) and her brother in-law will be waiting. What a sickeningly sweet way to start Valentine’s Day.

Of all my friends, I thought he’d be the second last to go, but alas. I now have only 3 single friends left in the inner cadre. One is in London and of no use to me, one is a confirmed bachelor and has nothing to do with sex (he thinks it is a filthy waste of time) and the other thankfully lives in Sydney (although he is holidaying in the UK at the moment and he too tells me that he has met someone – ugh!). This is getting a little beyond a joke!

If you saw a starving kid, you’d throw it some food. Ok, you may chuckle to yourself first, but you’d still feed it. Even I would; I suppose I’m charitable by nature. Which is why, if you saw a sex-starved woman, you’d also toss her a bone. It’d be unnatural not to. Charity again you see. But, what does one do when the act of charity crosses the line of morality? Should you still toss a sex-starved, but married woman a length? To phrase it in cricketing terminology “would you get her down to the Member’s end to face a couple of balls?” It is this conundrum that has been bugging me for no little while now.

Because, I’ve developed some feelings (lust is a feeling right?) for a married woman. I haven’t slept with her of course. By which I mean, I’ve slept with her once but, it was an accident. You know the old story, a few too many Gins at a work function, a sauna together, then a shower together and the next thing you know she is astraddle and riding you like she’s a nose in front down the final furlong of the Grand National.

We put that incident behind us, and as we are from different states, it hasn’t really been an issue. Except that we talk every day. And she is coming to Sydney next week to help a friend prepare for a wedding. And she is bunking off early to spend Saturday night here before she flies home on Sunday. So the question that I’d like to put to you gentle reader, is “Is it worth potentially endangering her marriage and a couple of people’s happiness, for a short lived and tawdry affair that nonetheless provides me with a fair amount of physical gratification?” I’m inclined to say “of course”. But, perhaps that is my charitable nature stepping to the fore again. Is it possible that morality trumps charity in this situation? As always, I’d be fascinated to know your opinion on this weighty matter.

M

While I haven’t moved much stuff down here, I have managed to rent a new pad. It has been over a decade since I’ve rented a place; I forgot how much of a fuck around it is. It is a beautiful home on Sydney Harbour - however, only the bottom floor is mine. It is really spacious and has all that a reformed sleazebag needs. So if any of you guys make it to Sin City, drop in for a lazy 50 or 60 beers.

In the “I never would have believed it possible” department. I have survived nearly 3 weeks with one blazer, three suits and a dinner jacket. It hasn’t been easy, but now I know what it must be like to live in poverty. Thankfully, I can now organise for all my suits to join me here - I’ve missed them terribly.