The Logies 2007

Yesterday, a b-grade celebrity friend of mine sent a link of from Facebook of a photo of us the last night before the Logies.

She and her entourage were down for the event. She had very nearly been nominated.

We want on the GREAT MELBOURNE FERRISWHEEL that night.

We had a dinner at an expensive Southbank restaurant and to a hip bar where we sipped cocktails.

It was a night that started a whole heap of unspeakable shit for me, so let me explain why.

I organised drugs for her and some television PR people.

"Not enough to be off our head, just enough to feel awake" was the request.

My rough-as-shit friend turned up with the drugs. She was off her dial and dressed like a fuck-head. I lied to her and told her we weren't able to get back into the bar. I didn't want my fancy new friends to see her. To link her back to me. To see where I had come from.

I gave them the drugs. They were happy. They asked me if I could get coke. They asked me if I wanted to go to the Logies.

"Will it be too much trouble" I asked.

"No darling, just wear a nice suit. I can get u into the media room and the after-party easy" said one glamorous PR woman.

I had already taken my share of the drugs and the prospect of me going to logies, as trashy and as Aussie as they are, got me excited.

"Yeah, that would b great" I said.

By midnight I left Cookie bar, due to meet Bree and two of her friends on Chapel St.

When I met them, Bree was drunk as fuck and her friends where slightly pissed off at her state. They were eating KFC. They were all looking gorgeous and glam as usual and when they eyed me up a down I couldn't help but feel a little self-conscious about my appearance.

I nonchantly told them about my invite to the Logies.

"Oh really" said Poppy, eyes Poppying out of her head. "So where do you want to go tonight?"

"Well I can't have a late one" I told her.

"Let's to go the Market" said Bree.

When she said that I felt a twinge of anxiety. Since the break-up three months ago I'd only ventured out on the gay scene a couple of times and I was still scared of walking into gay places. It wasn't so much the cliqueness or the coolness of it, but the prospect of being judged only by looks for 6 hours (when i had spent the past 5 years doing radio and studying political science, IE. not giving a fuck about looks) scared the fuck out of me. Edging 30, with a desire for young boys....it was a fear that seemed to be in perfect proportion with reality.

We walked in, Bree whispered to her friends that I go there all the time. It was a lie I was happy to live with.

Anyway this was a significant night that went all the way until 1 in the afternoon the next day.

Here's why and to make it more interesting for you Ive put it in a top 5 format.

5. I saw Trent again

A week earlier I had spotted Trent in the toilets. I told him he knew me before he was a high profile commercial TV journalist. I told him I was now a journalist as well. He said I should come at work at his TV station. He said "come with me" and took me into a cubicle and sucked his bite sized dick.

I saw him again at about 5am. We ended up spending the next four hours on the couch chatting. Every now and then he would stuff a pill in my mouth.

He told me how much he hated it at the ABC and questioned why I was so interested in working there.

"I want to be a radio presenter"

"Why?....Whats so good about being on-air"

I couldn't answer him.

He told me how much he loved it at his TV station and laughed when I said my fav journo was Tony Jones from Lateline.

With that feeling of wanting to fit-in, wanting to be hott, wanting a boyfriend ten times better than the last and that feeling of drug-induced "anything is possible" I started to reevaluate my goals.

I'd lived the last 5 years with the aim of becoming a radio presenter on the ABC, perhaps even on Triple J. I'd dedicated my whole life to it. I'd worked weekends. Late nights. Moved to a terrible country town. Ended a long-term relationship and cried hysterically every time it didn't look like i'd achieve my goal. It had sowed my little together, given it meaning and given me a sense of who I was.

And I suddenly realised I could not answer the simple question of "why do you want to do it"

I didn't know. I didn't have a good reason. Trent seemed to have all the answers, he was super-smooth and super self-satisfied.

On that grotty couch at 9am on the day of the logies sitting near an old man mouth wide-open overdosing on GHB and surrounded by smelly drug-fucked gay men dancing with their shirts off I felt the first signs of the ground beneath me beginning to fall apart.

Id sacrificed nearly every thing in my life for this one purpose and for what????

And why????

Here I was sitting in a gay nightclub, a place I vowed never to go back to and I was feeling more happy, satisfied, fulfilled, popular and confident that I'd felt the whole time I was living in radio land.

U can work and work and work at being happy and never quite get there. Take the right pill and bam! instant happy. Life suddenly seemed as though it was much simpler than I'd ever thought. The earnest wanker in me began to fade away and with it the very things that had kept me from going completely off the deep end all these years.

4. Jacob

I spent most of my time walking around The Market that night feeling insecure and embarrased. I would take mental note of who looked at me and who didnt and who seemed to be attracted to me and who didnt. I was 27 now. I was never stunning and now I was going to grow old as an ugly old poofter bastard. Oh and lonely as a cat. For whatever reason Ive had periods in my life when Ive felt so ugly that everything else in my life had seen pointless. That even leaving the house has been excrutiating. I'd forgetton this until I broke-up with John. Bit by bit those insecurities crept back. I'd been taking millions of photos of myself on my phone and spend ages looking in the mirror. Either to the point of narcissistic satisfaction or extreme revulsion. My mind was never going to accept I could some way between disgusting and gorgeous. It needed to feel extra special to some degree. I always had the feeling that when I walked around a gay club people where only judging me on one level - my looks. Nobody ever asked me about what subjects I studied in my Political Science degree. Here was a place where intelligence, manners and decency doesnt matter - its all about beauty and sex appeal.

I was walking up the steps on my own when I saw a cute little guy with blonde hair stop and look at me. I saw his eyes flash like he'd seen something really nice and it almost embarrassed him. I smiled at him. He smiled and blushed back. There was something going on there. I'd never had that with someone since I'd been going out. That instant animal magnetism - and it was reciprocated.

I then preceeded to carry on like a nervous fucking ETHEL at her first blue light disco.