The Civic Chronicle #6.2

The best rape money can buy. I’ve tried it. It’s okay.

Five straight nights of boozy, sleep-deprived “rockin’ out” had left us deprived of our natural energies, so we welcomed the opportunity to relax for a couple of days.
Jonks’ beautiful girlfriend Julia cursed us for turning their trim little apartment into a filthy refugee camp, but they still let us use the toilet and play Mario Cart with them.
Thanks guys.

I left the house periodically to do some metal-celebrity spotting, but I failed to see anyone from The Crown and became depressed. I would sit in the bathroom listening to “Deathrace King” on my iPod and snorting lines of paracetamol while Aaron and Jonk laughed and heckled me from the loungeroom. It was a long dark, junior, a long dark.

But soon enough Monday evening rolled around, and Monday evening meant “Get your shit together!”
We had been booked to deejay for 6 hours at a slick local nightspot where the establishment was putting on their weekly ping pong tournament. Within a few minutes of the bar opening about thirty paddle-having scenesters had rocked up and their skills were on display.

They would all circulate around the table at high speed, serving to whoever happened to be on the other side at that moment and then moving on. Anyone who failed to return a serve was eliminated, until it would boil down to 2 ping pong gunslingers, who would then play a full match with brutal intensity. There didn’t seem to be any prizes for the victor in these long, weird matches, beyond the esteem of the other ping pong assassins in the house.

Needless to say the action was tense and pacey, and Aaron took the first shift in the booth, playing appropriately angular, uptempo “jams” to keep the athletes on their game. Like most sociopaths, Aaron has a number of keen intuitive insights into the human mind, and he can certainly "Fit the music to the mood", as they say.

The time passed quickly and my turn in the dock came around midnight. As I started in on my set Jonk introduced me to local selekta/promoter/woman-about-town Sara Shakarchi, who had made a flattering re-post/comment on the internets regarding our show at Henrys.
Sara is of Iraqi extraction, and in fact is descended in a direct line from the ancient Kings of Ur, so naturally her beauty is breathtaking and her taste in music and fashion impeccable.
I stopped breathing for a full 10 seconds after we shook hands, and then I remember mumbling something about marriage and a house in the country.
Sara looked shocked for a moment, but then she laughed and poured her beer over my shoes.
“Go back to your prison island, you bald Aussie creep.” She sneered.
“Buy a cheap wig and do some sit-ups”.
And with that she went back to chatting gaily with Aaron and Jonk.

The Queens of Sweden! Julia and Sara discuss the action,

ignoring the guy with the most AWESOME mullet ever.

I had no time to brood on my humiliation. The crowd was becoming increasingly dense and rowdy. The ping pong had given way to boozy dancing and flirtation, and if I hadn’t kept the tracks coming the mob  would have turned on me and ripped me apart like a chicken. At that point at least three giant Vikings had muscled into the booth and threatened me with horrible beatings if I didn’t make their girlfriends dance.

But fear made the time go quickly, and before I knew it it was 3am and the crowd was thinning. The barkeep came over and made the cutthroat gesture to indicate last track, so I put on some Wagner and scuttled out onto the street for a few cigarettes (I was so desperate for a fag during my set that I let Sara convince me to try snus, the small packets of tobacco that Swedish people stick inside their lips. It smelled vaguely like stale urine, but it delivered a powerfull drip-feed of nicotine and I was thankfull for it).

Snus. Yeah, you stick it in your lip. Just don’t sniff it first.

Anyway, eventually the whole crew assembled out front and we weaved home (via a Kebab stand, naturally) for some powerful night-caps and sweet, sweet rest.

Once more, in case you hadn’t heard, Gothenburg Rapes! Stick  it in your lip and suck the juice, shithead!