| Another day, another deluge with me damply under it.
I watch a student protest and read a paper while waiting for the ground to
dry.
My room-mate is a 21 year old American male saturated with hormones screaming to be released. He has totally lost control and has turned into a shell, a mere vehicle driven by a subliminal need to reproduce. I told him he should hurry because in a couple of years you'll have an embryo section in the average fridge. I told him NZ woman call menstruation "Doing the family wash" Being a product of a consumer society, he probably sees woman as a kind of organic breakfast cereal with small novelties called offspring near the bottom of their packets. The rain has stopped. Its Friday night and I'm considering rushing out to wiggle up some money. Haul the radio and my stilts down to the main street and accost the overdressed French bundles with my professional frivolity. Take that. Wiggle Wiggle. At 27 I have the beginnings of a work ethic. My needs are simple. I need merely a plane ticket to the other side of the world and spending money and my incredibly expensive sunglasses have to be paid for so I can look fashionably world weary on my arrival back in NZ. I am overstaying in France and so am wary of trying new, perhaps unorthodox places to perform. My best pitch has been denied me by persons unknown, who throw large buckets of water at me from the 5th floor. This tends to halt proceedings as my audience spend their time craning their necks waiting for the next bucket load and not watching my show. I tend to grizzle, stop the show and go home damp and aggressive. © MARTIN EWEN 1998 |