*Health and Safety Warning: Post may be rambling, incoherent, and spelling and grammatically challenged. Not unlike this warning.
The desire to purchase and possess a living creature had been strong in me for a while. It culminated, a couple of months ago, in the acquisition of a dog.
Owning a dog, it seems, makes one want to pose idiotically whilst smothering your canine.
I have been renting varied airy apartments for a while now, and whilst very comfortable in a number of ways (e.g. enough hot water, nice cooking smells from multitudinous Indian neighbours), they were beleaguered by their strict ‘No Dogs’ provisos. I had known for a while in my special place, somewhere above my big toe, but below my neck, and possibly in the organ residing in my left chest cavity, that I needed a canine companion – and if the dog ban couldn’t go, then I would have to.
Around a month and a half ago I found it, the answer to all my dreams: a fibro box. I applied for it, annoyed the real estate by ringing them every ten minutes to see if I had it, and then finally, was accepted for tenancy.
Dilapidated, and admittedly mouldy and flooding at its stilts, my fibro shack laughs in the face of modern convenience. Wryly.
With the aim of moving my entire household of bulky and heavy furniture single handedly, I asked my friend if I could borrow his Land Rover Cruiser (no European styling). Not only did he lend me it, but he also offered up his flatmate, ‘Red Shoes’. ‘Red Shoes’ is not, as you might think, a native American name handed down from generation to generation, but rather a pseudonym that I have given to this flatmate individual, because of his penchant for the aforesaid footwear.
A click of his red shod heels will not send him home, but their steady perambulation will usually take him to beer.
That shaggy gentleman, Red Shoes, was to deliver himself in the Four Wheel drive, and then help facilitate my move, mainly, I presumed, through utilizing his muscular mass for the purpose of lifting and shoving things. Whilst I had every confidence in Red Shoes’ strength, I did not have any high hopes when it came to order and organization, so on the day of the move I spent the better half of the morning sweating and groaning as I moved most of my furniture down three flights of stairs in a dangerous and chiropractically risky manner.
An hour after he said he would, Red Shoes roared up in a haze of dust and Aussie hip hop. I gave him a grin, and waved my hands sheepishly at the monumental mass of antiques and mattresses. Looking up, I saw Red Shoes’ eyes flicker, and my heart sank a little as I wondered what the two of us had gotten ourselves into. Just as I was about to excuse him in his hungover state, and perhaps call a professional mover, Red Shoes sprang to life. Apparently the eye flicker indicated careful logistical consideration, rather than post-drunken apathy.
“Fiffles,” he said, “I have a policy when it comes to moving. Everything can be done in one carload.”
With that he jacked up the stereo so that the sub in the back of the Cruiser shook, and began to pack. It became instantly clear that I was not just actively discouraged from placing objects in the back of the car, my aid was prohibited. Instead, my role was to pass him things, bang my head from time to time, and keep his spirits up with the promise of future beer.
Similar to Mary Poppins’ Carpet Bag, the Land Cruiser has a magical capacity for lamps and cushions.
When I was little, my dad had a similar rule. We women and children would pack for holidays, for example, but once the bags were lined on the gravel road, only dad had the necessary know-how to make every little thing fit with room to spare. It was like a Chinese box puzzle or a Rubic’s cube – each little part had to be slipped in in relation to the others, and one wrong move could thwart the whole thing. There was honour in a successful pack, and prestige in the careful slotting of a bag here or an umbrella there.
Red Shoes, who when drunk half closes his eyes and looks a little like a masculine snake or lizard who is stretched out in the sun and almost asleep, was alert beyond compare when piecing together my belongings in the trunk. I watched on amazed as he managed to squeeze in three tables, a number of chairs and a quantity of miscellaneous screens and lamps into one load.
We two steeled our resolve, and carried on this way, managing to complete the business in three short car trips. That was not, however, before the incident I like to call Hell in Harvey Norman.
I was ferried along to that great mecca of mass marketed white goods by Red Shoes, who was so amiable as to offer to swing past there and negotiate fridge and washing machine acquisition. When we arrived he scurried off to alleviate his queasy hung-overedness with KFC chips, whilst I sauntered in to organize financing a white goods salesman that I had already struck up a business relationship.
I should have known, I suppose. We both should have. But Harvey Norman is that perculiar sort of time vortex that makes you forget the many hours of pain and equivocation after you have left it, ensuring that you can never properly learn your lesson.
The only material difference between Harvey Norman and Hell is Signage and Typeface.
By the time 45 minutes had past, Red Shoes had forgotten all about the delicious chips, all about the joy of the move, and all about anything other than the slow revolution of his eyes back into his sockets, as he sat on a massage chair contemplating ways to kill me for holding him up for so long.
Red Shoes tore himself away from the chair eventually, ending an hour of motorized Shiatsu massage to saunter over to me and the salesman.
“Do you know what this lady is?” asked Red Shoes of the salesman. The man shook his head. “She is an idiotarian” stated Red Shoes. “By that I mean that not only does she not eat meat, she also doesn’t eat wheat, sugar or dairy, and for no apparent reason!” The salesman began to smirk, warming to the idea of being one of the boys, and ganging up on me.
One dietry need not being sufficient, my penchent for fussiness makes it difficult to eat at restaurants, and maintain social ties.
“Before I met Fiffles,” Red Shoes elaborated, waving his hand for emphasis, “I loathed and despised vegetarians. But after meeting her, their eating ideology seems completely rational and reasoned by comparison. This woman is in dire need of being taught a lesson, methinks.”
At this the salesman giggled, his attention completely diverted from me and our transaction. He enthusiastically picked up a power drill that was lying on his desk, and began to drill through a piece of paper with a sort of false nochalence. This, I presume, was done in an attempt to be reciprocal and show off to Red Shoes. This sort of juvenile and abusive behaviour continued until we left the store.
It was not, in fact, the first time that Red Shoes had called me an idiotarian. It was not, in fact, the last. We eventually escaped from that Harvey Norman hell, not, unfortunately leaving behind a smoking mass of burned rubble, but rather 4000 of my dollars.
From there on in the move progressed smoothly, and was sanded around the edges, metaphorically and at times literally, by the continual aid of Red Shoes, his flatmate (owner of the Land Cruiser, and builder my washing machine), and various others (e.g. carpenters).
Now I am presently sitting at the desk, in my beautiful fibro palace, still enjoying the fruits of Red Shoes’ labour (that is, furniture). A little dog sits quietly in the hall, gnawing on a particularly objectionable and blackened bone. The ambivalence I feel towards Red Shoes has not dulled but rather intensified due to his helping hand, and whilst it was all in all a great experience I am considering offering up a small sacrifice (possibly my new neighbour’s new infant child) to the moving Gods if I can stay put for at least a year or so.
Idiotarian, the term coined by Red Shoes to describe my gustatory persuasion, is also used by militant Right-Wing War Bloggers to describe citizens who object to America’s invasion of Iraq, or support Gay Marriage, Gun regulations, or civil liberties in general. The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, I presume, acts as a Bastian of the political Right by eating any pesky Liberals that attempt to go near a ballot box or a political protest march.
