Pay TV

One of my best mates relayed the following to me and it needs to be somewhere more secure than my head.

He used to work in the cut and thrust world of Sydney advertising. Knowing that, some of you will be able to imagine the vile type of office environment this story would have been told in.

Monday, and a lot of tired wrecks come in to compare weekend war stories. Having mistaken the reaction she usually elicits from people (horror, followed by nervous laughter) for bawdy camaraderie, the unpopular, profoundly unattractive loudmouth bully launches into another tale of failed romance.

The apprehension level in the room rockets up. What nausea-inducing detail of her existence are they going to be treated to now? How are they going to react with the appropriate level of sympathy when the first and warmest impulse is to run from the room screaming? How can they empathise with her on the mysteries of love, as her lurid pink mini-skirt rides up over the top of dimpled thighs?

Expecting everyone in the office to be interested, she bellows the details of the low-lit nightclub where she’s flirted with the guy for a couple of hours. They’re both drunk and she’s gonna take him home and jump his bones. She elaborates at top volume and gut churning detail about the groping during the darkened taxi ride back to the flat, the snogging and fondling in the unlit hallway and the falling into the apartment.

They make it in, still on the make. She lights the living room, turns to her latest conquest and tells him to make himself at home while she goes to freshen up and slip into something more comfortable. (Everybody at this stage is praying it’s a coma.)

Now, the guy must have sobered up a little in the cab, and then become fully aware of what he was in for.

Her gagging workmates hear how she exits the bathroom. Swishing the feather boa and doing her best to do a slinky walk without the noise from her thighs drowning out the mood music - she finds him gone and the front door swinging open.

She is not entirely surprised. This is not the first time that an intended fling has done a runner on her. She goes to the fridge, serves up a big bowl of chocky ice-cream and settles herself down on the couch to watch the end of Rage… to find that he has stolen her telly on the way out.

The tension in the office starts to crack like sea-ice in spring. Smiles start to spread like a fast summer dawn. The phrase "...stole her fuckin' telly!" starts to be repeated joyously around the room.

Now I don’t want to be prescriptive about the way you read the blog - but do just pause and think this over.

Is this the modus operandi of one of the least violent, but most hurtful home-invasion artist (you get to case the joint properly without having to break in)? Or is this the work of a truly heartless opportunist?

“Oh fuck me dead. She is a dead-set, ocean-going, copper-bottomed sea-cow. I can’t believe I got all those drinks and the cab. I have got to get out of this joint before she comes back from the… hey, that’s a nice telly… guess the night isn’t a total right-off.”

Either way, there's a bloke in his crucial dancing threads, standing on a street corner holding a television, trying to hail a cab. I just can't imagine a getaway car being involved.