Zac who?

Joseph-Gordon Levitt, the hottest man on the planet, lies sprawled on my desktop and all over my heart. Celebrity crushes, delightful and destructive, have for a long time eluded me. Not since I caught my first glimpse of Seth Cohen in the candy coloured world of Orange County, have I been so head over converse chucks in love with someone on the other side of the screen.

But Seth wasn’t real and, as the seasons of The O.C. persisted, he began to deteriorate into a character fail. The show, suddenly devoid of plot, followers and Mischa Barton, stripped their remaining characters of character and left them all high, dry and washed up beyond belief. Seth’s demise was especially painful to watch. His nerdiness lost its cuteness, his hair lost its curls, and his quips were no longer witty and eventually, no longer even quips. It didn’t help that the actor who played him, Adam Broody, was a tool of the highest order, dating his onscreen co-star and starred in emotionally heavy films in which he cried onscreen and made out with Meg Ryan.

MEG RYAN.

In contrast, Joseph-Gordon Levitt kicks some serious ass. For a start, he’s got a better name. He smokes pot and wears sharp suits, although not often at the same time. He’s Jewish and lives in New York. He’s got the face of an angel but that wouldn’t stop him laying some serious shit down if the going gets tough. He’s a stud in (500) Days of Summer even though the movie is a bit of a dud and he’s amazing in Mysterious Skin.And can thrash out an acoustic version of ‘Bad Romance’ that would make even the greenest sceptic go Gaga. Babe; certifiable.

My flatmate (twenty-six today and radiant) is currently gaga over a different lady; One Joan Hollway, the curvaceous figurehead of TV’s pastel coloured masterpiece, Mad Men. We are respectively obsessed, sitting side by side on the couch trawling Google images for hours with grins on our faces. The other flatmates go to the gym and give us looks of disgust. They come back and we are in the same exact positions, but with a glass of wine. We watch really bad movies just to see our beloved do a five minute scene with Sally Field. This must be the reason so many gazillion people saw Twilight.

It’s a good age for the celebrity crush. Google has made stalking into an art form. And in today’s indie scene-themed day and age, a celebrity crush is mandatory. It’s like a familiar. Joan is very popular. So is Don Draper (and fair enough). Hoards jump on the Jimmy McNulty bandwagon and others on flock to Eric Northman’s Scandinavian aesthetic. Johnny Depp is still acceptable but only if you specify ‘early nineties Johnny Depp’ and mention John Waters. Julian Casablancas will do in a pinch. Tom Cruise will not.

And so I develop my obsession with Joseph. I drop him name in every social gathering and let people that I am (or think I am) the go-to authority on this particular hottie. Because people judge you.

A boy at work recently told me that his biggest celebrity crush was Jennifer Aniston and that she was ‘the most beautiful person in the world.’ I excused myself politely and picked up a copy of some glossy magazine, the front cover graced by a rather sultry looking Penelope Cruz. He shook his head and muttered that he’s rather “bone Rachel any day.” I sighed and nodded and smiled acerbically. I don’t doubt that a lack of judgement of would make the world a better place sometimes. But let’s be honest here; in the worlds of Sinead O’Connor, ‘he’s a fool.’

Manage your Manila

The other day, I sold a woman over a hundred dollars worth of books on how to save money. She handed me her Amex card with a wincing,, a blush of relief spreading over her features when it came up ‘Approved’.

Outside on the pavement, a busker man sat cross-legged on an upside down bread crate. He played an acoustic, not very good rendition of ‘The Entertainer’ over and over again all afternoon. It was relaxing, bordering on torturous. People dropped money in his hat but not very much. I stood at the counter and de-bugged the DVD security tags, humming along when I didn’t feel like throttling him.

The corporate bookstore, with its tangled web of sales targets and conversion rates, chews through managers like rats chew through muesli bars. Someone is appointed to take charge of the chain in question, given a bumped up salary, a pokey office and a bunch of cheap flowers and told to increase sales by X per cent by the end of the fortnight. They think they can do it, and they usually do. They wipe off their damp forehead, congratulate the apathetic floor staff and head home to their loved one or cat and open a bottle of something cold and bubbly.

And then, the next week. The corporate wigs, hair full of slimy product and usually sporting cheap, well pressed suits appear in the pokey office again, another sales target in the manila folder. Sales are good but they CAN be better and, as manager, that is their responsibility. And so, our heroine of sorts (although keep in mind that she is dull, power hungry and too dumb to realise she will never earn the respect of anyone) widens her eyes and devises some elaborate scheme involving a free pen for anyone who spends over a hundred bucks or a Twilight-themed day in which every customer who knows the magic answer to some trite, semi-literate piece of trivia goes into the draw to win a free New Moon DVD. The staff groan and co-operate, mainly because they are also promised a piece of the meagre prize pie; a free cinema pass if the sales threshold is reached by the end of the day. You see, the manager also has to manage her staff in order to meet the target, otherwise she’s in hot water (and we’re not talking about those dreary instant coffees she’s beginning to knock back with her eyes closed every morning after a night of restless sleep).

And so it goes on. Week after week. Sales targets; conversion rates. Men with round faces holding manila folders invading much needed personal space. Instant coffee scooped out of the jar with shaky hands. Coupons. Staff with twisted, resentful faces. Morning meeting speeches involving phrases – ‘We all need to pull together guys’ and ‘Only five more sales each per day’ – that don’t have the desire effect. Sleepless nights. Resignations. Personal vendettas. Cold sweats. No time for reading. Fractured dreams about Reaching Target.

Eventually, the manager snaps. Her eyes are wide with something other than excitement and she meets her corporate oppressors with snappy, bitter remarks and shrugs of her tense shoulders. The time for jokes has long passed. They try to rope her into a seemingly fail safe promotion involving Lonely Planet travel guides but she shakes her head and demands a holiday. They sigh and send her off and know that she won’t return; the nerves in her brain too frayed to stay focused on line graphs. The rest of the staff are kept in the dark about this, thinking only that their leader has abandoned them in a time of need and are not so secretly relieved to hear that she will not be returning to rule with an iron (although very well manicured) fist.

The corporate heads gather, hover less than gracefully over the morning meeting and pick apart what is left of the staff. There have been a handful of resignations (or ‘quitting’ as it is known in the retail world), most likely caused by the anxiety waves radiating down the management ladder. Their manager, they are told, has ‘moved on.’ She has left the high life to open her own cafe in a town much too small to even mention, feeling the sudden need to leave the high heels and budgeting book behind in favour of a baker’s oven and a cupboard full of scone mix. Nothing is mentioned about the breakdown, the headaches. The claw marks on her office walls are sanded down and the whole place repainted a nonthreatening shade of peach.

‘And this,’ the head-est of the head honchos exclaims somewhat grandly 'is the new manager.'She stands before them beaming. She begins to spout some sweet sounding words about her love of books and the good times that will fall upon everyone involved in the coming weeks and months. There are a few scattered claps and the day begins. Our second heroine of the piece feels a sense of achievement and picks up the manila folder in front of her.

And all around this, all through this and before and after and during, people buy books that make them happy. They read dramatic plots of heroes and villains and people falling through the cracks of life and leave the shop clutching plastic bags full of stories, oblivious to the real life stress and heartache dusting their covers.

Stress in the Afternoon

Yesterday, a fat, bald man in a mustard yellow turtleneck sauntered up to the counter with a pile of six Last of the Summer Wine DVDs and a copy of Model Airplane Monthly. He licked his lips incessantly and asked for two copies of his receipt. For the rest of the afternoon, he wandered around the shop, bringing small bargain buys to the register and repeating the procedure over and over again. A book about the Pyramids. A packet of pens. A bookmark with a Celtic pattern on it. Rinse and receipt, rinse and receipt.

The customers are the key to any retail job. It is their cameos that separate one hour from the next; their smiles and outbursts that turn that frown upside down or leave you with a severe case of the afternoon doldrums. The staff are there for better or worse; Vinyl Bitch and Riot Wmmmn, unglamorous as they are. But you never who which spacey patron is going to amble into your life and blow your book-themed mind right off its shoulders.

Take, for example, Harried Mother at One Fifteen. She wheeled her pram up to the counter; one of those cumbersome vehicles with wheels the size of tyres and probably a small engine hidden under the seat. The younger child sat inside, a blonde bubby of about two with snot dripping down both nostrils. He wore a dinosaur outfit and seemed unhappy about it. Beside the pram stood the older child; a girl with a beaming smile and the kind of wide eyed jubilation who might just tie you up and read you Little Women until you passed out. Harried Mother dropped an armful of books onto the counter just as baby bink started to cry.

“Mama, can I give Baby Jason a suck from my lollipop?” The Cherub Girl asked, pulling the orange Chuppa Chup out of her mouth and offering it, Misery-style to the screaming dinosaur baby. HM grabbed the offending candy and handed it back to Cherub, resulting in the dinosaur baby to intensify his screaming level to “everyone in the shop turn around and look” level. He reached out desperately for the forbidden confectionary, clawing with his little arms and straining to yank himself out of his pram straps. His sister took a passive step away from the pram and stuck the offending article smugly back in her mouth. Two old ladies were already queuing up behind this motel crew, pretending to look politely at birthday cards and averting their mortified eyes.

Baby Jason let out another embittered howl and HM, juggling credit card and a vibrating iPhone whipped around and hissed at her daughter “See what you’ve done now, Elizabeth? Stupid.” She then pulled a Julia Donaldson book out of the pile and, with a final venomous look towards the poor girl, told me in clipped tones that “I don’t think we’ll be needing this one today, thank you.”

Elizabeth’s face froze and then, somewhat predictably, burst into tears. She threw the orange Chuppa Chup on the tiled floor where it smashed into a few sad little pieces.

“Mama is the F word! The F word!” she screamed and ran out of the shop. The two old ladies stared after her with their mouths open. Baby Jason howled even louder and strained towards the orange remnants on the tiles below. Somehow, the wretched woman and I had managed to complete the transaction and I tried to give her one of those empathetic “what’s a mother to do?” smiles. As if in response, she reached into her bag and pulled out a packed of Benson & Hedges.

“You never think it’s going to be like this and then it is.” She sighed. “Thank god for these, eh? Oh, love your cardie.” She winked at me and wheeled the screaming child away. The two old women sidled up to the counter, stepping gingerly around the Chuppa fragments.

“Mums can’t be doing it these days,” one of them explained. “It’s all too soft, that big woman on the TV and her naughty stool. Sometimes they just need a good smack on the bum.” Behind them, Mustard Yellow stood quietly, another bargain book in his hand. He licked his lips expectantly.

Two days later, I ruined the very same cardigan by putting it through drier cycles at the local laundrette. It shrunk to half its size.

On the way home, I bought a packet of Benson & Hedges.

Broken Record

My new favourite staff member at my corporate bookshop is a delightful creature who I have nicknamed ‘Vinyl Bitch.’ She is a tall, awkward looking girl with a sour face; the kind of girl who makes any mother’s heart sink a little when her son arrives with her, arm in arm, at the family Christmas dinner. I imagine she would sit sulkily in the corner, texting and picking resentfully at her roast potatoes.

On my first day, I smiled as widely as I could and introduced myself. She managed a grumpy “hi” and then stalked off to stack the travel section. It wasn’t until about 5’o clock that I managed to crack her into her zeal. Stranded at registers, we were rescued by a customer purchasing a CD of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars. VB scanned it and stared the customer—a small balding man in a cheap suit—triumphantly in the eye.

“I’ve got this on vinyl,” she stated, almost smiling, and then went back to being a bitch.

For the rest of the day, whenever I was within her auditory sphere, I name-dropped a list of classic albums, each one concluded with VB turning, sneering and affirming “Yeah well, I’ve got that on vinyl.” The only exception seemed to be with the mention of several obscure albums which prompted the reaction “Yeah, I really want to get that on vinyl.” Sometimes when we stand together at the registers, I hum ‘You Spin Me Right Round (Like a Record)’ under my breath. She pretends not to hear me.

VB’s work attire consists of tight jeans, tall boots and an endless parade of dull, grey cardigans adorned with indie rock badges. These badges are the one thing that seems to signal VB’s daily weather report: If she’s in a boring daily sour mood, the badges tend towards the sunny sixties pop of The Beatles or acoustic Bob Dylan. On a rainy Wednesday, when shop morale and sales are at their lowest, Joy Division and Nirvana can be spotted on the grey lapels. On Friday, things seem to pick up again; The Clash often makes an appearance, Led Zeppelin, The Pixies. The Sex Pistols pop up from time to time, Jimi Hendrix is also a regular. VB declines the weekly offer of a beer with the rest of the staff but instead mutters something about seeing her friend’s band, The Joan Crawfords, at a basement bar in Collingwood. No one is invited to join her. She stalks out the store, arms hanging by her side, headphones in her ears, ‘Comfortably Numb’ blaring out for anyone to hear.

VB has a boyfriend called Brendan: an aspiring writer who works at a stationary warehouse. She is constantly on the phone to him in the lunch room, staring furiously at any other staff member whose voice is raised above the appropriate level. Their conversations tend toward the lacklustre end of the spectrum, with phrases like “yeah well, whatever” and “I’ve seen it; it’s lame” peppered throughout. Once, he was sighted at the front entrance, a good looking guy with a chubby face and a leather satchel. He was halfway through a conversation with Jenny, the well toned merchandise manager, when the VB marched to the front of the shop, red faced. She gave Jenny a look that would wither a patch of daffodils and dragged Brendan away, hissing “come ON.” The next day, Patti Smith and Pearl Jam glowered out from the grey Cardigan.

The other day, I asked VB if she would consider getting a badge featuring the late 90s pop sensations ‘The Cardigans’ and consequently have Cardigans on her cardigan. She glared at me contemptuously for a good 30 seconds and then told me that you probably couldn’t even get The Cardigans on vinyl; “that’s how shit they are.”

I think I kind of love her.

Black Books

I needed a job; I found one. A book shop or at least a sort of a bookshop. This time a week ago, I was drinking merlot and feeling jaded about being unemployed. Tonight, I drink Riesling and feel somewhat jaded about the 40 hour week ahead. The irony is delicious, the wine is more so.

The book shop in question shall remain nameless, a sprawling mass of a thing attached to a shopping arcade. It’s a corporate chain affair, with plenty of books but mostly written by Eckhart Tolle and Jodi Picoult. There is a large self help section and lots of 20% off stickers hurriedly slapped on piles of Popular Penguins. So far, a uniform is not compulsory but I have heard disturbing rumours of bright red polo shirts. The widescreen TV halfway through the store plays Avatar on loop. No one in it is hot.

As I said, I needed a job.

The week started off with as something of a challenge, with my hours starting at seven ‘o’clock in the AM. Doey eyed, I scrambled around the store stacking shelves and chewing on bits of rolled up paper so as not to collapse in a pile of golden slumbers. Everywhere I turn, Robert Pattinson’s bored eyes stare back at me from books, posters and jigsaw puzzles. It is impossible to avoid the Twilight Corporation; even the magazine stands have abtastic CHILF of the Moment Taylor Launder’s sex stories all over it. I try not to get turned on but it’s hard not to when his glistening six packs eclipse everything else. Pun, get it?

One of my fellow employees is an overweight woman who has worn the same Twilight T-shirt for the past five days. On Wednesday, she turned up with purple hair and the staff told her she looked ‘modern.’ She met her husband on an Internet dating website and seems happy. We wear lanyards with our ‘passion’ on them. Mine in Seinfeld. Hers is ‘Riot Grrrl.’ Watch this space.

The day starts with a bevy of manic managers initiate “GO-O-O-O-O-O TEAM!” warm up exercises, complete with daily budget requirements and lessons on how to use ‘open ended questions’ when selling to customers. The rest of the staff smile and nod and sip away at their Almond Honey non fat vanilla lattes. I stand at the back of the meeting and half expect Alec Baldwin to come storming in and yell “You call yourself a salesman, you son of a bitch.”

We have walkie talkies and say things followed by the word “Roger.” It’s awkward and rather a change from the independent book trade in which you talked loudly across the store and people knew who Alan Hollinghirst and were. Here, the main words used are “percent off” and “discount club.” The soundtrack consists of a cluster of CDs chose from head office. These include Norah Jones and Craig David sings Motown. Tears dribble down my interior as the latter’s version of 'I heard it through the Grapevine' pervades my ears for the fifth time in eight hours. At 4pm, I try to smuggle the Rolling Stone’s revised edition of Exile on Main Street into the stereo but was stopped by the assistant regional manager, a large man with a beard who told me in a hushed tone that it might be a little “too edgy” for the customers. It was release in 1971, before Watergate. I die a little inside and head back to the counter where I sell a small, excited woman three copies of Paulo Cohello’s The Alchemist and somehow manage to keep a straight face.

The hours and days slide by and a pay check appears and I take it with a grateful, exhausted smile. Across the road, the city’s top independent bookshop smiles kindly at me, its front window filled with Chekov biographies and Hertzog box sets. I stare longingly and then, realising that I am still wearing my corporate bookshop t-shirt of whoredom, pull my coat tightly around me and head home. I’ve got one hand in my pocket and the other one’s holding a cigarette. Life, as they say is good. And so is nicotine.

Melbourne, in & around my mouth.

Once again, Elaine picks up her corporate heels and settles in a new country. She stops at duty free for a couple of bottles of Bombay and a couple of shuttles and trams later, reaches the stylish stomping grounds of Melbourne, Australia. It’s a cool place, Elaine thinks. Wellington on Steroids with a sprinkle of Victorian class. There aren’t many beaches but there is a river; a great, greasy thing called The Yarra which winds its way through the CBD. Tourists dutifully snap photos of but will probably delete them a few hours later. The weather is fantastic.

There are more bars here than any alcoholic could ever stumble in and out of; more restaurants and bistros that can ever be counted. Horse drawn carriages clip-clop up and down Swanston Street, carrying fat, bored families of tourists in akubras. No one in this arrangement looks pleased to be here, particularly the horses, whose dignity is lost somewhere between their elaborate tassels and the enormous shit bags swinging beneath their tails. If they could cry, I’m sure they would. The drivers wear their top hats grudgingly, waiting out the half hour of till they can tuck into their packet of Lucky Strikes and fart loudly.

Our flat is a wee brick villa, located in the uber-chic suburb of Fitzroy (north). Brunswick Street is filled with ethnic delights, not least the faction of souvlaki cafes, which serve up mouth watering pita breads filled with grilled lamb at all hours of the day or night. After a year in the Asian Royston Vasey town where the only shop closed at 7pm, the joys of 24 eateries cannot be expressed. Let’s just say if I was a Blondie song right now, it would doubtless be ‘Rapture.’ Up the road is a Soup Kitchen, which dishes out dreamy Moroccan from a spoken menu. The trick is to be polite to the harried waitresses or you might get thrown out into the chilly Melbourne evening, sans soup. The whole thing is so Seinfeld, I almost can’t handle it. We went to see Vampire Weekend on a week night. Ironic?

In Lygon Street, Italian restaurants are packed wall to wall. They quietly terrify me. Walking past in the evening, seedy matradees try to coax you in with a beckoning finger, offering you a free bottle of cheap wine if only you’ll come in and try their mouth-watering linguine. Out the back sit the owners, ex-Soprano henchmen with hands clenched into fists and blood smeared aprons. It’s a good time to have a vegan boyfriend by your side, shaking your head at the creamy, meaty delights on offer and escaping to the Thai place down the block. The owners eyes follow you down the street and light another cigar. I swear this is reality and not an HBO cliche. Hamish and I eat our Thai with shaky hands, sweat dripping into our red curry.

Last week, we watched the YouTube video of Oprah interviewing a woman who had her face and hands torn off by a chimp. It was a cultural experience.

On Saturday, we trekked to hideous outer suburb Reservoir to attend a Roller Derby. It was perhaps the most Gummo moment of my life. The crowd was an interesting mix of lesbians, bogans and art school kids trying to be ironic. The music consisted mainly of Marilyn Manson and Slipknot which seemed appropriate as two teams of girls in hot pants and roller-skates raced around a rink and try and push each other over. The roller derby girls had amazing names such as ‘Skate Bush’ and ‘Kitty Von Krusher.’ At one point, our ringside view was blocked by an obese man with a ponytail until his friend brought him over three hot dogs and he had to go and sit down so he could hold all of them. At half time, a gimp man in a neon blue dog suit and wraparound sunglasses serenaded the crowd with an air guitar rendition of the ‘Danger zone’ song off Top Gun. People cheered and threw their empty beer cups at him. Out in the freezing night, we smoked cigarettes because everyone else was.

Melbourne is a place of treats. There are things to do, eat and gawk at in every crevice of the city. Whether you’re looking for a good Ethiopian restaurant or a Friday night sex party and you’re bound to find one that exceeds your expectations. Fun times are many. Elaine approves. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.

Sweet Fancy Moses (and some others)

Elaine Benes: dancer extraordinaire and muse of many. When my life expires and I swap one land of long white clouds for another, Elaine will be there. Somewhere up there in the eternal paradise the good Christians promised us, between the Tuscan villas and the bouncy castles, there will be a huge, shimmering dance club. It will be called Post-Puddy and will pump out funk music all hours of the day and night. It is here that we will meet Elaine, grooving and grinding all over the dance floor with her eyes closed and a big, wasted smile on her face. The walls are stacked with chilled bottles of Bombay Sapphire and an elaborate lemon tree sprouts majestically in the corner. Beautiful people lie underneath it and make out.

An immaculately dressed barman, reminiscent of a young Jack Nicholson, smiles seductively and hands me a stiff gin & tonic. Elaine grabs my hand and pulls me in for a close one. ‘Brick House’ starts pumping over the club speakers. Ms. Benes shakes her ass and throws in a few ‘little kicks’ for good measure. The crowd cheers. ‘Single Ladies’ is on next.

The amalgamation of Bombay Sapphire and Elaine Benes is, of course, the inspiration for this blog and my life in general. Alcohol clearly brings out the best in her; I can think of almost no one else in the fictional universe with whom I would rather get my wasted face on. However, my mind cannot help but wander to the rest of the Seinfeld characters and the intoxicant it would be most fun to consume with each of them.

For Jerry, it would most definitely be cocaine. Blow would match his sneakers for one thing. There could be jokes made about nostril sizes and the Jewish faith which I’m sure he would find amusing. And Jerry’s already manic speed talking would go into overdrive after a few lines. He would pace around his apartment in a frenzy, muttering things like ‘if you want a joke, try some coke’ and scribbling them furiously down on a pad. He won’t stop talking for hours, his words getting closer together, especially when he discovers that the high he’s experiencing is known as the ‘superman syndrome.’ And eventually, he will put on some 80’s techno and start cleaning his apartment at double speed.

Taking an acid trip with Kramer would a mind-blowing experience. “Listen buddy” he’d whisper to you a couple of hours in, “don’t talk to loud but there are bugs running up the wall. They’re spies from the top, I know they are.” He’d swallow nervously and wipe the sweat from his brow. “THEY’RE FREAKING ME OUT!!!” He’d yell suddenly before rushing to the front door to spy on the invisible ninja robots through the peep hole. By the end of the day, you’d be pulling up the floorboards to make a protective moat around the living room, and filling it with bottles of ginger ale.

The thought of getting blazed with Newman is both hilarious and disturbing. The incoherent stories about the postal service would be a dream come true. We would tear open envelopes, cackling hysterically at the love letters and Christmas cards between puffs of smoke. And then, our stomachs rumbling with serious munchies, Newman would order twelve pizzas, all with extra cheese, and we would gobble them down, stopping only to praise the person who invented double crust with our mouths full of half chewed dough.

And then we get to George Costanza, and my mind goes uncomfortably blank. Getting drunk with George would be a depressing experience, reminiscent of the worst kind of Tom Waits song. The addition of weed into the equation would simply heighten the uncomfortable paranoia and low self-esteem that George lives his life by even at his soberest. And baby, let’s not even get started on the hallucinogens. There is little that scares me more than entering a warped, unstable parallel universe with George and his neuroses and plaid shirts. The only thing that could top it would be the inclusion of Frank and Estelle Costanza, yelling at each other like demons and sucking everyone around them into a black hole. All the orange juice in the world couldn’t get rid of that nightmare. With all this in mind, I guess George’s drug of choice would have to be Prozac. He seems long overdue for a serious dose. And perhaps get his parents on some as well.

And I’m sure that somewhere in the American Midwest, there is a balding, acne-scarred Mark Chapman-wannabe hunched over a computer in some basement. A photograph of his ex-girlfriend lies ripped to pieces on the linoleum floor. He stuffs another handful of Cheetos into his mouth, wiping the orange powder on his track pants. His sweat drips onto his keyboard as he types the final sentences of his morbid thoughts into a little blog titled Prozac & Costanza.

He is Bizzaro Telford.

What Nina said.

As of the last post, your humble narrator was conquering North America and being smug about it.

He even had the audacity to use the word 'conquering' when the verb should really be something closer to 'inspecting.' Or perhaps it was North America which was inspecting him. There was sex, drugs and a whole lot of Greyhound buses filled with crackheads and the occasional saint. There was Jews and stuffed crust pizzas and seemingly endless art galleries which your humble narrator stumbled through, feeling overwhelmed and mostly dumb and wishing all the while that his Art History-themed friends were there to slap him around a bit.

And then, after three plane rides and all the duty free alcohol my tired arms could carry, I collapsed back in my beloved New Zealand. A faction of the Mills clan met me at the airport; their smiles too wide to be taken sincerely. They kept up the facade all afternoon; the younger siblings clawing for presents, the older ones eyeing up the Duty Free. Exhausted, I caved in at about 9 o'clock and with one last bout of thank yous, they clutched their precious treasures to their chests and went about their various strands of their busy lives: school, sport, op shopping, breakups, Facebook.

And so your narrator, more humble than ever, found himself back to pre-Japan square one. And in typical square one style, he again began working at Unity Books; Wellington's premium independent bookshop and employ of Liberal Arts graduates. It is a wonderful, gleaming place. Like a gay bar, it's almost impossible to get anything done. But oh, if only gay bars were as full of rich pickings. "Pick me" the books whisper one by one as I begin my early morning rounds. "I'll keep you up all night and give you a good go again in the morning..." The fiction wall is particularly awful, especially during long, hot afternoons around the A to F section. The Faulkners and the Easton Ellises pant heavily, shelves apart. "ohhh, just the first paragraph" they moan. "We were maaaade for each other...." I swallow heavily and swing back into the Film & Music table which is an even bigger mistake. Big, glossy encyclopedias pledge life commitments, happy to sit submissively in my bookcase for decades, so long as I promise to pull them out for a bit of fun on the occasional rainy day. Most days, I leave the store exhausted, with my brow sweaty and my pants half undone.

At Unity, it is important to 'fit in.' This means having a favourite David Bowie album, and unless it's Low, it doesn't count. This means preferring cheap red wine to expensive white and using the phrase "Coetzee-esque" without batting an eyelid. It means reading The Lovely Bones ironically and rolling your eyes at anyone who buys Eckart Tolle. Being in a band helps, being an aspiring poet helps more. It's wonderful but frequently difficult to keep up; whether The Smiths are a valid band changes on an almost weekly basis. As a group, the Unity Staff with their quirks and passion for soap-opera-indie-kid lifestyles fall somewhere between Black Books and Empire Records. They wish.

Then there are the customers. Last week, an old man stamped his foot in a rage after discovering we didn't have any books about crop circles, furiously crying "what kind of book shop are you?" There was the frustrated housewife who couldn't find any kids books for her two year old with an extended reading level because none of the smart ones were 'pop up-ey enough'. It took all my all of strength not to yell at her "Margaret! Margaret!" I doubt she would have understood. My favourite customers are the Narnians. These are the middle aged men (in the closet, another literary pun, geddit?)with red faces who spend a good half an hour browsing the biography section, easing closer and closer to the Gay & Lesbian table as if by accident. Once finding themselves here, they glace quicky around and whip a paperback edition of erotic man tales (usually Up the Back Passage or Daddies) off the table before darting back to biography. They turn up at the counter ten minutes later, eyes averted, the offending text momentarily hidden under a small stack of Evelyn Waughs. I smile and flush everything quickly into a brown paper bag, forcefully mentioning the weather and watching the relief spill over their face. The other end of the scale is the nineteen year old boys in singlets and dyed blonde locks. They take a few fertive glances at the queer table and might even pick up a book or two, but they never make it to the counter, never able to meet the eyes of the knowing bookseller who stand behind it. Worry not my readers, they'll be back.

The sun sets across the bay, a glass of chardonnay sits beside me. Nick Lowe, Junior Boys and Lady Gaga crank it on the itunes. Life is good. The future is bright and the tepid wasteland of Urakawa is far behind. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a little alarm bell rings the word "future" over and over again. But that's for next week.