Warning: Cleo Bachelor of the Year 2002 Spoiler Within Body of Text
May 8, 2001
Perhaps it’s a message from God that the world isn’t ready for something that sounds so beautifully cherubic in my head (in a heavy metal way) - my singing. Sure. Go ahead and dismiss it as a straining, clamourous atonal shouting, but I won’t take your opinion to heart. Oh no. I’ll only take your advice if you’re a nodding, frowning, clipboard thrusting judge on Popstars.
To the collective Australian music industry’s mortal disadvantage, however; I was too late to apply for a place in this year’s season of the show. I’m very sure that there was a place in Scandal’us for me. To me, their song ‘Me, Myself and I’ feels empty somewhat. I don’t think the song is quite what it originally set out to be. There’s something in me that seems to be making a desperate cry out for attention (much like Jason Bird’s goatee) which says the song really should have been titled ‘Me, Myself and a Smelly Gay Alcoholic Bogan’.
Yet a global shopping mall tour and clips of me panting ‘Oh my God, this is just… the most incredible moment of my life’ intermittently placed around a has-been eighties rocker masquarading as a band manager were not to be. I only discovered that Popstars had begun auditioning for the second series a few weeks after the whole shebang was over. Too bad.
So, bearing in mind I was too late for Popstars - and Big Brother too, no less (to think I could have been stuck in a house with Todd!); I have firmly set my sights on an accolade I believe I could easily obtain: Cleo Magazine’s Bachelor of the Year.
Oh yeah. That’ll be me in 2002. But why am I so smugly confident? Well, it’s quite logical. I’ve made a list of common bonds shared between every past Cleo Bachelor of the Year winner:
• Suspected to be gay
Bearing these criteria in mind, I’m a shoo-in!
Then again, perhaps I’m being over-credulous. Physically, I’m not exactly perfect. I imagine that Cleo judges will be primarily looking for good kissers - after all, this is how Cleo instructs women to select men for fornication purposes (once, of course, they’ve found out ‘what your man fantasies about’ for research purposes). In this department, I could be in trouble.
At an early age, my dentist decided my teeth weren’t as straight as they could have been. A regular dentist would simply have clamped a set of braces onto my quivering gums, but the dentist my mother lured me into with promises of fast food for dinner (strangely negating any dental work that would be performed prior to the meal) wasn’t quite the same. He instead elected to string a piece of strung-out, heavy-duty coiled wire along the back of my front teeth.
It’s still there to this day. Apparently everyone forgot about it - even the dentist. He awkwardly checked my teeth every time I next visited, and the wire wasn’t mentioned again. To be honest, I’d prefer the wire remains; because it’d feel rather alien without it.
Then again, an eerie absence of metallic comfort surely overrides any discomfort caused to a bleeding, scabby tongue, roughened up by stray sharp metallic jagged edges. That’s right: as of two months ago, the wire seems to have started falling apart. I’ve now got weathered calluses on either side of my tongue - I’ve learnt not to scrape it anymore.
In the bedroom, however; this can cause all sorts of problems - if you know what I mean. Although it’s all a matter of getting used to things, I can’t create a scene in my head with a toothy, toned bachelor accepting a plastic plaque from a women’s magazine editor; then loudly thanking her in a shower of blood-flecked spittle.
My hair could probably do with some attention, too. Currently, most friends of mine have three haircuts to every single haircut I have. My hair is a little unsure of itself at the moment; there were bold plans to grow it long again, but when a semi-deaf hairdresser obviously misheard me and shaved my head instead, the choice was made for me.
So it’s not looking good on the physical status front. Mentally, I doubt I’d be fantastic either. I can just imagine what some of my so-called friends would eagerly whisper about me when visited upon by over-eager Cleo reporters.
I find it increasingly frustrating that although Big Mo is socially permitted to inhale whole bags of ecstacy and engage in ridiculously nonsensical conversation, but remain socially accepted. This frustration increased recently when, with the aid of alcohol, I attempted to explain to him that ‘there’s an ocean in our toilet’, but was ridiculed.
There was foggy truth behind my ramblings: there’s an airvent in the room occupied by our toilet which sounds like the ocean if you listen very carefully. Of course, being rather intoxicted, I assumed Big Mo knew this snippet of information about my apartment; and was understandably upset when he considered me to be exceedingly weird, then began shrieking when his cat walked in the room carrying a cigarette in its mouth.
But I’ve got one key physically winning trait on my side: I’m blonde. The lightness of my hair seems to have worn out over the past 12 months, though - blame this either on having hair so short you can’t really see the true colour; or moving closer into the nucleus of Sydney’s pollution.
I’m hesitant to prove my blondeness, though. The last time I tried to do that was when Cam was visiting, so I loaded up my graphics editor of choice. Unfortunately, the program in question has a habit of beginning its browsing from my usually secreted porno directory. Instead of viewing summer_99_beach.jpg as I’d intended, Cam was unwittingly looking at beefycock.jpg.
‘Well,’ Cam bit his lip. ‘I guess you were blonde,’ he hesitantly remarked.
So maybe I’d have to work a little on that, but there are plenty of other aces up my sleeves - my thighs, for instance. I’ve got top thighs. They’re nice and big. Not so much muscular as… pliable, but big all the same.
Actually, I’ve learnt not to boast about my thighs. Approximately two weeks ago, I stood up to walk to the kitchen, and my corduroy pants were making that annoying whoop-whoop-whoop sound when your legs brush against each other. I soon realised with horror I was actually wearing shorts, not corduroy; and it was my legs making the corduroy whoop-whoop-whoop sound.
Even if I won the Bachelor of the Year award, however; I’d have to make sure that I couldn’t make it to the ceremony. Instead I would sit expectantly wearing sunglasses in front of a camera, seated in front of a giant photograph backdrop of the giant Hollywood sign. Perhaps I’d be required to be physically present to accept the award or forfeit it; but there’s no way I’d show up in person.
Why? Well, you obviously haven’t heard me walk. My joints are so brittle that a simple motion such as getting out of bed in the morning sounds like there’s some serious popcorn cookin’ going on. Understand that this would be amplified by carefully positioned microphones at the awards ceremony, and you see my predicament. In true bachelor nominee style, I’d likely only manage three steps up to the stage before bursting into tears at the embarassment of it all; and rush for comfort and reassurance into the arms of my coke-snorting agent.
Still, there’s always Popstars series three. I’m sure the judges would be impressed by someone who can create their own percussion whilst dancing, simply by rubbing their legs together and flailing their joints around.
