I am not a lazy person, although it would be hard to convince the casual observer otherwise if they were to stick their nose in my bedroom at the moment. It’s 3 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon and I’m reclining languidly on my bed ignoring a switched-on but silent TV while playing a computer game and listening to a carousel of high definition CDs — pretty much non-stop for the past three days. So, you can tell I'm not idle.  I am actually a keen and energetic worker; I just don’t know what I should be working at right now. I try to think ahead but I can only manage to think back over what went wrong. And short of blaming myself, I’m not sure who I can say is exactly responsible for my predicament.

A series of events during the past couple of years has left me in this doldrum-like state of confusion. While the majority of them weren’t bad, and even the bad ones not dire, the sum total of their effect seems to have fallen on the black-hole side of a decimal point.

My name is Nigel Roobottom. Early in my life my friends decided that I was a  'Razzaboo' - not exactly a six-pack short of a piss-up, but a bit... a bit like dog shit on a bike tyre— I could fly off on a tangent and make a mess on someone else's shirt.  Like the shit, the nickname stuck and it became shortened to 'The Razz'.  I don't mind. Could have been worse. They could have called me Nigel.

Nigel. What a curse of a name. I believe it made me what I am - a Razzaboo. I know there are other people who are unhappy about their names but what can you do? For one thing,  I could change it. That would certainly annoy my parents, but then... almost everything I do annoys my parents.

My parents. In a social worker's office I could safely declare that my declivity could be blamed on my parents, but that would be unfair.

I was brought up in an average, suburban family that was firmly entrenched in the culture of mediocrity and heavily ascribing to the notion that communication among family members is for sooks. They also believed in accepting what was dished out to them, no matter how bad it was. Whinge about it, yes! Moan about it, my fur coat. But to muster the vision and wherewithal to do anything about it was beyond their imagination. That they were unable teach their offspring any other way to deal with life could actually be blamed on their families, and so it goes back to the Roobottom cave-family.  The facts are that my parents raised me to the best of their ability and inclination. They worked according to their programming. Therefore and ergo, the finger is pointed back at me, I suppose.

I wanted to change my 'programming', to be different, to rise above a life addicted to mediocrity and the comfort of para-failure. I worked my butt off trying, and yet, here I am  — the very picture of failure and misery, surrounded by the gilded frame of material success.  I tried hard, but my enthusiastic though random tilling and sowing of the great and fertile soil of commerce and industry has borne artificial fruit.

I’ll cheer up in a little while; I always do. But for the moment it feels good to wallow in this comfortable blur and reminisce over the recent years since I decided to be "un-Roobottom". This reminiscing is causing me to remember some things that embarrass me, even here, alone in my room, but I know it's necessary to replay the often puerile mental movie many times before I can shove it on the bottom shelf and start on another. You, dear reader, only have to watch it the once, if you can get through it.

So, I’m remembering back — very vividly and clearly  — to the point when the wheels started to turn faster than I could pedal.

Hormones are what really kicked it off, like they always do with teenagers. I was just out of school and at a loose end. That was really a big part of the problem — I was always at my loose end and living in fear of going blind or growing palms I could polish the car with. Unlike many of my friends who were happy to relieve the pressure with a quick wank and a bit of a chat about it later, the fear of public ridicule from sporting a five-o’clock shadow on my palms drove me to want to share my testosterone-fired boy-juices with a female, as it says you’re supposed to do in the Good Book. Actually, I read it in the Good Magazine with the Black Label but that was the Gospel to me at the time.

Anyway, this fear of prickly palms and premature optic failure dragged me unenlightenedly in and out of numerous juvenile but mostly unsatisfactory love clinches. Unconsummated, is the more appropriate word, if you don't count your underwear as a sexual partner.

Because of this, I was naturally plagued with those distressing dreams nature bestows on the young male of the human species, only more so. And many of my dreams had a disturbing undertone, a recurring theme that nearly always culminated in some kind of wedding ceremony that would have me as randy and a bantam rooster with something that felt like a broomstick in my pants, but unable to lift my bride's seemingly endless ruffled wedding gown. Another feature of these dreams was that I could never see whom I was marrying, but I always suspected it was my mother. As a result, the dreams ended with my waking up lathered in sweat, with a seedy, sick feeling in my stomach. This insight into my nocturnal mental meanderings has less to do with my story than it does to explain my perception of life, and its goals. And, I suppose, an awareness of the disappointments awaiting life's travellers who are donged on the skull, at birth, with a plastic spoon.

Plastic spoon, wooden spoon, or cold dessert spoon — they could have donged my knob with any of them till it was black as well as blue, but it would have made no difference. My hormones, and bodily accessories, were rampant, and I didn't know what was causing it. At the time I thought it must have been love - the nesting urge - that was making the too-frequent pyramid at the front of my pants. These days I know better - it’s caused by lust - but back then I thought it was caused by... lu-u-urve.

There were girls that I was hot about, but in my waking, as well as my sleeping hours, I was only interested in getting naked with them and my hands on their juicy bits. Having actually had little or no close-quarters business to do with females up till then, I suppose my mind translated this lust into love.

If that was the case then, in one year after I left school I had been seriously in love at least thirteen times. And only got dropped for eleven of those. For the other two times, thanks to the People's Broadcasting Network, Gossip and Rumour, I was able to get the drop on them before they got me. Make no mistake — Love is a battlefield.

But there was one opposite number that I was really  serious about —Bridget. Bridget was a challenge right from the time I met her. Bridget was, now that I think about it, actually sexless, or at least, less exciting to me than some of the other girls I knew then. But, being socially further up the ladder than I, I thought it was only right that I should be allowed to look up her dress. Being "better than I could afford"  (as my mother always told me) only caused me to be more interested in her than I should have been but I wasn’t going to lower my sights because my family were still tugging their forelocks to anyone from the postie upwards. I went after Bridget Brackenhill-Smythe, but perhaps because of that "betterness", she always remained aloof and played hard to get. Tantalising. In fact she played so hard to get that when I cycled up beside her one day she put her umbrella in the spokes of my front wheel and then remained completely aloof from me for the six days I was in hospital.

Not to be so easily put off, I worked out a plan to make this elusive jewel mine. A clever plan calculated to catapult me into the centre of her coronary system — her pancreas! That explains why I struggled with biology, but I knew enough to realise that from there, though my feet were slippery with her pancreatic secretions, it would be a mere hop and step into her heart.

The plan was quite simple. I started to tell her that I loved her every chance I could get, and when I couldn't get the chance I sent her loving notes to read. I even told her that I dreamt about her. Sometimes that was true! Well, once...  when I forced myself to dream about her.  But I harped on the love bit in the hope that she would see me as a person of mature feelings, prepared to talk about commitment and marriage or, at the least, practicing some of the duties married couples are licensed to perform.

Please remember that this potboiler part of the drama was enacted some years ago. These days, any such plans, if I had any, would be a bit more sophisticated.

Anyway, this particular plan of mine had worked a dozen times before with varying degrees of success and, it eventually started to work on Bridget because after only four or five weeks of harping she let me get on the train with her. I figured it would only be a couple more weeks of love talk and she would let me get in the same carriage.

The plan worked better than I had anticipated. Unfortunately, it was me the plan was working on.  I became convinced that I did love her and I was having dreams about her and that it was obviously time for us to get married. All I had to do was propose. So, beguiled was I by my own delusions, I chose the following Saturday night dance as the proposal time and venue.

In the meantime I kept reminding her that I loved her with every part of me including my earlobes and my hair follicles. When I do something I like to be thorough. I figured I would only have to keep this up until we were safely engaged then I could back off a little until we got married and started fighting. The kids would come after that, quickly followed by penury, insanity and death. Amen!

Saturday night came as it does whether you stay alive or not.  I went into the dance with the proposal looping through my mind, but I should have taken more notice of the warning thinly concealed inside a little incident that occurred. I had an attack of the nerves when I arrived at the dance venue and had to make a dash for the toilet. Straining my eyes, trying to pick my way through the darkened area near the toilets, I was distracted by a movement ahead of me. I looked up to see the shadowy, threatening bulk of an ample, perhaps overfull body coming towards me. Then I tripped on a carpet stain.

Head first into a soft enveloping female bosom I plunged, grabbing at other soft things as I fell. I was propped against her like a creaky lean-to up against a jelly-filled bouncy castle listening to her angry, raspy breathing and her heart beating in soft sensurround. I thought of mother. Then the incredible bulk grabbed me by the ears and violently thrust me away.  She made a big show of flicking the 'yuk' off her hands and, with a parting comment — 'Wanker!' — left me to my red-eared embarrassment.

I hate having hot, red ears. It saps your confidence. I found the toilet, relieved myself, splashed some water on my ears and went out to propose to my future wife. Lack of an extended schooling left me not knowing when to quit.

Bridget was with her pack. I walked straight up and told her that I loved her. Bold and manly-like. 'How do you like that, dear Bridgie', I thought to myself.

Apparently, she didn’t like it.  She poked two sharp fingers in my eyes, kicked my shin, then crow-pecked the back of my head with her knuckles when I bent down to rub my shin.

She was still playing hard to get. I thought that maybe I went in a little too hard and fast; that maybe I should take a sweeter, gentle route. I offered to buy her a Coke, which had some small effect because after that she agreed to a dance providing it was with her friends as well. I could sort of join in. It didn't sound like much but I thought she was weakening.

My shin still hurt so I danced with a sort of hopping step, favouring my good leg, trying to make it look like a dance from a music clip. Some people behind me must have been impressed by my moves because they started to copy me, like I was in the vanguard of a new dance trend. That seemed to really impress Bridget and her friends who started to smile. When I smiled back they appeared to get embarrassed and had to turn away. Bridget was still grinning so I decided to make my move while she was happy. Looking at it now, my refusal to acknowledge the reality of the situation seems stupid, but you must remember that back then my thinking was addled by mind-altering gremlins and testicles as full as tins of carnation condensed milk.

Back to the action... So, I hopped over to her and yelled into her ear the spiel that I had rehearsed. I told her that I loved her; I wanted to get engaged and have 1.5 children and a mortgage that would see us into the grave. Bridget looked a bit puzzled by all this so I explained the whole story as I saw it — how happy we obviously were and how awful it was that we had so much happiness and not be together and how we should get married right away and put a stop to it.

Encouraged by her surprised silence, I prattled on, telling her how we could live in a tent in her parents' back yard until we could afford to move into a caravan park and how she should consider kissing me, one day. She could start off in a small way by holding my hand when we were in private, like in the tent or the caravan annexe, and work up from there. Then, one day when we were old and resting on our rollovers, perhaps we could swap chewies, or, if our pizza-gnashers had fallen out we could suck the same piece of barley sugar.

I was feeling warm and gooey inside and about to swoon thinking of all that bliss when she burst out laughing in my face.

"Marry you!" she cackled. "I wouldn't even go out with you! With all your disgusting habits... You've got to be joking!"

Then it was my turn to look stunned. What disgusting habits? What could she mean?

It was a good thing I was wearing my Phantom ring on my little finger because the shock from the verbal intensity of her final word - "joking"  - made me jump, and only the ring getting jammed in my nasal orifice prevented that deadly jabbing digit from giving me a frontal lobotomy while it probed for a crusty boogie that had been troubling me all evening.

As it was I nearly choked on my five-day-old gum wad. This girl had the potential to be dangerous. I began to look at her in a slightly different light as my hormones retreated for cover.

"What disgusting habits?" I demanded wiping my finger on my jumper. "Surely you don't mean my characteristically eccentric mannerisms? My 'man, the animal' act?"

"Oh, change hands, you pimple. That's a pathetic excuse you use to justify farting in public, saying how natural it is - although we know it's really a symptom of rectal incontinence!"

The shock of that caused a little air biscuit to escape from my nether regions despite my best efforts to pinch it back.

"And," she went on... "And what about the disgusting business you do with your hands in your pockets?"

"Balls!" I stammered.

"Rude pig!" She spat, punctuating it with another kick to my shin. That hurt so much my leg went numb.

"Look," I tried to explain while limping after her and dragging some of the offending stuff out of my pockets. "It's just balled-up bus tickets that have been through the wash in my jeans."

With one swipe she brushed away my pocket fluff balls, our future and a small part of the end of my nose with her razor-sharp fingernail. She turned around and began to walk away.

I was devastated, but determined she wasn't getting away with that. I hopped after her and grabbed her arm. She looked at me with a glare so malicious I could feel skin cancer breaking out all over my face. She was being extremely cruel but I fixed her right there and then. I snatched back my drink, turned my back on her and hopped away — out of reach.

Just when I thought I had the best of the deal the music stopped long enough for everyone to hear her yell after me... "Get lost you smelly GEEK !!"

Although cut to the quick and smarting, I tried to hop away in a dignified manner but even over the noise of the next song I could hear her friends and a couple of hundred other idiots laughing at me.

At her refusal to accept my proposal, I had felt crushed and hurt. Now, I felt embarrassed, crushed and hurt. My nose was stinging and the drink was flat and warm from her hot, sweaty hand. Just when I was thinking I should go home before anything worse happened to me, some fool with a lighted cigarette bumped into me and burned a hole in my jumper.

Well, that was it! I was as good as dead. I'd borrowed the jumper from my brother and he'd be pretty mad when he found out about it. And then, when he found the burn hole, he’d really flip out and then he’d kill me, later confessing to mum what he's done, because he’s self-destructively honest. Then mum would kill me, too, for ruining his jumper. I was as good as dead. And, as I’d had my future scraped out from under Bridget's fingernails and flicked onto the sticky floor, I realised that I might as well be dead; so... why not go home and face up to the inevitable?

But, then, in a flash 'it' came to me. This is your life, 'it' said... why give them the pleasure of ending it for you? You deserve to have that small but final pleasure all to yourself!

Of course I did. It was my miserable, worthless life to end as I chose.  So, I looked around for some spectacular way to buy the sheep station and write my name in the history of the Latvian Union Hall. Should I stick my head into the disco speakers...? No. Not certain enough. I might just go deaf by Madonna. Drown myself with a hundred cups of soft drink...? No. With the money I had I could only afford to drink enough to get sick and throw up. And even then, I'd probably not get to the toilet in time and suffer Death by Embarrassment. That did have a certain potential, but as I stared blankly at the exit door I saw the perfect method. Tried and proven all around this sun-drenched, fun-filled, night-clubbing continent.

I hopped over to the biggest and ugliest bouncer propping up the door-jamb. I stood right in front of him, holding my warm drink and stared him right in the eye. His good eye that is. The other one looked like it belonged in a bottle in a pathology lab. Slowly, I raised my hand, grabbed his tie.... and blew my nose on it.

The music stopped. A hush came over the crowd. Death should be spectacular and almost instantaneously painful.

But, no....  bad luck again. The bouncer was none other than Piggy Sullivan, the dirtiest grub this side of the gulf - the Gulf of Mexico, that is!

As I stood there waiting for my passport to the Pearly Gates a broad smile cracked Piggy's ugly dial, flashing his hideous black and yellow teeth at me. He laughed in my face, giving me a small foretaste of the hereafter, something I then realised I maybe didn't care too much for. Piggy's breath was like a wallop in the face with a bag of putrefying garbage. His mouth had to be declared environmentally unsound. While I stood there taking quick shallow breaths to avoid eating too much of his gob odour, Piggy, to my utmost surprise, cupped his hands over his face and blew his nose — into his bare hands!

There were many 'Oohs' and 'Aahs' from the crowd. I admit I was puzzled, too — until Piggy wiped his hands in my hair.

The crowd behaviour from that point was quite nasty and too petty to describe here. As for me, I was in a state of shock bordering on insanity. My skin was going numb and my hair was already paralysed. I was tragically stricken but, as my luck would have it, not mortally wounded.

With the sounds of laughter and jeers ringing in my ears and the cup of warm drink still clutched in my trembling hand I staggered outside in the hope that some merciful thug would take advantage of my condition and deliver the coup de grace, but, as I stumbled in the direction of the pimped-up cars and the clutch of petrol-affected cretins comparing the tightness of their dull black jeans, an angelic voice pierced my delirium.

"Hey, give us a sip of you drink, will ya?" it said.

I looked in the direction of the voice, searching for the angel. I saw her; she was no angel but she was ok. And... she spoke to me. That was good.  I handed her the drink.

"It's a bit warm, but thanks." she said. "Hey, what's the matter with you. You look sort of....thingy?"

Thingy? I was in the worst state I've ever been in and she thinks I look 'thingy' Maybe the old charm was still working. Maybe I still had that little spark that shines through like a gold filling in a cakehole chocked with rotten teeth. My mind raced. Hormones peeked out from behind secure barriers and waggled their tadpole-like tails

Had my luck really been all that bad or had it actually been with me all the time? Eh? Sparing me from a life of certain misery with the shin-kicker? Saving me from a painful death at the hands of some comic gorilla or worse — a pack of motor morons? And hadn't it now placed before me a girl who cares; who thinks my present pitiable state is just... 'thingy'?

And who knows, this newfound friend might adore my disgusting habits, that is... my urbane personality identification traits. I cast off the mantle of defeat and looked at the possible future. It looked... so-so.

True, she was not exactly the girl of my dreams but... dreams can be manipulated by conscious effort, or even lied about. But, right then, I had a great idea. I would take this girl inside and show her off to the shin-kicker, just to prove... well, to prove something.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Louise. Why?"

"Korean parent, eh. Well, come with me, Louise Wy." I had recovered enough strength to grab Louise by the hand and drag her into the dance where I pranced with her in front of Bridget like a triumphant hunter who has returned with his catch.

But the shin-kicker was not paying attention to the mighty hunter; she had already latched on to some other poor bloke and I - with my recently returned acuity - quickly picked up the feeling that she was after this bloke, and that she liked him.  She was smiling at him (like a jackal drooling over the carcass of a goat, I thought), hoping the club's UV lighting would flare her teeth white like the pratts in the tooth whitener ads.

When she eventually noticed me she turned on a smile that stretched it into a broad, smarmy sneer so wide that the blue light actually revealed the shadows of the caps on her expensive choppers. She needed to be taken down a peg or two. Or three!  And in front of her new darling.  I thought fast.

I jigged over to them and called to Bridget, in a voice loud enough for her new victim to hear: "How's your nasty little problem?"

I figured she would assume that I was referring to me as being the problem that plagued her, and I was right!

She replied with a snarl: "It won't go away!",   I quickly put my hanky over my mouth and nose.

I turned to her new friend who was, by now, looking a bit puzzled and said, with sad resignation: "And that's despite all the treatments modern medicine can offer. What a pity it's so contagious as well as potentially lethal." And then I watched for a moment as he grasped what he thought was going on and I could see the wheels turning inside his head. The air-space between them chilled as he took a step back from Bridget, and then she caught on.

Sure, she could explain it away to the new fool, if he was brave enough to get close to her now — and she would have to try to explain it because I could see that she was keen on him, and he was receding into the crowd. 

It was only a small scoring point, but, given my score for performance up till then, small points counted.

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to Chapter 2 - Get a Job...