Love and Other Perishable Items by Laura Buzo

Author:Laura Buzo
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780375986741
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2012-12-11T07:00:00+00:00

April 28

I’ll write my letter to Amelia now. Here goes.

Dear Youngster,

What I hate could fill a book, and maybe one day it will. Here is a concise version.

1. Oh-Brad. I have no idea what he looks like, but in my mind he is tall, broad-shouldered, cut, tanned and handsome. Also, I imagine that he is finishing some degree that will lead to an extremely well-paid job. Every day of his life he has unfettered access to the woman I love. But the worst thing is I know Michaela well enough to know that, surely, she wouldn’t have lied and lied and then thrown me over if she didn’t love this guy. I won’t even say “dumped me for Brad,” because if she never broke up with him, then she and I were never really together.

2. Stuart Green. Stuart Green represents all that is unjust in the universe. The world is there for him to plunder, as far as he is concerned. This attitude rakes in the spoils. I used to think that behind his eyes lay an expanse of soulless nothingness. But in the last year I’ve changed my mind. Behind his eyes lie gusts of well-disguised malevolence. He’s set a new low with the Kathy thing.

3. I occupy a strange kind of life-stage purgatory at the moment. I’m twenty-one, but I live with my mummy and daddy, in my childhood bedroom. I won’t be considered “independent” by law until I am twenty-five. Please, God, let me be well out of here by then. Anyway, Youngster, it’s a particularly powerless existence that I eke out at 16 Acacia Terrace and it’s making my relationship with my parents crapper than what it should be. Watch this space. Which brings me to my next point.

4. As soon as I finish uni, I’m moving out. If needs be, I’ll increase my hours at Land of Broken Dreams to cover my rent. Somewhere affordable but not at the ends of the earth. Who knows what is in store for me on the “career” front, but at some point in my twenties the chorus of prompts from my father, my uncle and various other players to buy property will reach a crescendo. “I bought this house when I was your age,” “Renting is dead money,” etc., etc. See, Youngster, I regard rent payments as the price of independence, not dead money. Do they really think it’s fair to compare Dad buying our three-bedroom house in the seventies for $24,000 to the task of buying a three-bedroom house in any decent suburb today for a minimum of $600,000? And with student loans to boot. I get anxious just thinking about it. All this you have to look forward to, Youngster.

5. I covet my neighbor’s oxen. I’m not all happy for people who have their lives sorted out and go about living them, who have money, independence, intelligence, influence and hot, hot girlfriends. My mate Rohan rang the other day and said he’s putting down a deposit on a house in Merewether, which is a suburb in Newcastle.

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