“Righto! It’s a deal, but wait, how will I lose the girth in your cheeks Bum face?”
“Far out love, do what everyone else does. Exercise, join a sport, eat a balanced diet! You do everything arse about face, the things you should have a little of, you have excessively and the amount of time you should spend outdoors, you spend indoors, it ain’t rocket science, you need to MOVE your arse to lose your arse!”
“No shit?”
“Wrong! You’ll also need to do that to help you shift kilos. But leave that with me. You need to make a start on the new you.”
Kylie looked at her watch. “It’s 6 am and I’m literally talking out of my arse. I don’t think we should be exercising right now.”
“Perhaps not now, but definitely tomorrow. Go and look out your window, what do you see?”
“It’s bloody dark,” said Kylie .
“Your front window, go and look out your front window and tell me, what do you see?”
Kylie walked to the window near the dining table and looked out towards the Strand. “Jeepers, someone opened up a can of fitness freaks. There’s flamin’ walkers, joggers, and there’s even people out on the water, in like, a long skinny boat.”
“I can’t see it Can-new?”
“Oh yeah, it is too!” Kylie said squinting to get a better look.
“Any of those ideas take your fancy?”
“There seems to be a few people stashed in that canoe, I might have a crack at that,” Kylie said as she sat down at the dining table.
“OW! You just sat on my face.”
“Sorry mate,” said Kylie but did not budge. She stared out the window at the glistening ocean and the faint sound of ‘Huts’ from the canoe teams was carried across the still water into her drunken ear space.
Kylie was exhausted. She fell asleep with her head in her right arm, then fell off the chair and onto the floor. There she lay until the midday sun woke her. With her eyes still firmly closed, she crawled into her bedroom and felt her way into her bed. Waking at 8 pm, she stumbled to the toilet, before going straight back to bed. She didn’t wake up until 6am the next morning, and it was clear that her agreement with Bum Face had kicked in, he had begun moving stuff out of storage for her. Since she was now awake, she decided not to go back to bed, but instead put on her exercise shorts, her socks and sandshoes, grabbed her hat, house keys and a 1.5 litre bottle of cold water and headed outside. It was a brand new day and she was ready to face it. Bum face came along for the walk too; he was just incognito under her shorts. With every step Kylie took, you could see the outline of him smiling.
Kylie felt alive, refreshed and reborn by the time she got back to her flat but received a rude shock when she opened the door. “Ughhhhht! Who made this friggin’ mess?” she asked, wondering who else had been in her flat the previous night. “Oh man, it was me,” she admitted, taking responsibility for the mess and for the cleanup operation. Empty coke bottles and cans and plastic cups were strewn all over the kitchen bench top, the dining room table and lounge room floor, open chip packets spilled chips onto the lounge and the floor, and her CD collection was scattered across the carpet which smelt of stale booze, and a stiff ocean breeze was blowing items of rubbish haphazardly around the room.
She walked into the kitchen and filled up the sink with hot water and detergent. The ice had melted away and the only evidence of it was the empty plastic ice bag lying near the toaster. Looking around the room she grimaced at the task ahead of her. She already had two garbage bags full of rubbish tied up and ready to take down to the rubbish bin, and the next morning was garbage collection day. Kylie grabbed the garbage bag roll from underneath the sink and started filling it with rubbish. Working in a clockwise direction from the kitchen to the dining area to the lounge room, she then broke off to her bedroom, the spare bedroom, the toilet, the bathroom and finally the laundry and filled up two garbage bags worth of rubbish. Then she got out the vacuum cleaner and vacuumed the carpet, the tiles in the kitchen and the bathroom, and finished up with the mop and bucket. She followed her nose to find a damp, bourbon-stained mat in the lounge room which she picked up and threw into the laundry tub.
Kylie found the smiley face toast maker and put it on the kitchen bench ready to use the next time she bought bread. Gathering the remaining gifts from her dad’s emergency parcel into a basket, she placed it on the kitchen bench to remind herself that she came from a loving family that really cared about her. After cleaning the entire flat she felt a renewed energy and decided to start the day off with a positive action seeing as she had spent most of the weekend in misery.
Grabbing all the rubbish bags, she headed downstairs and placed them all in the bin. The bag with the torn and crumpled Wish Lischt, now in three pieces, sat on top of the pile. After retrieving her bike from upstairs, she pointed the front wheel in the direction of the Strand, deciding to head out towards Rowes Bay and Pallarenda. Kylie wanted to hug the coastline as she was hungry for the thing she had missed while living in the Outback of North West Queensland, the ocean. She pedalled along the road then swapped over to the bike path, sweating out pure bourbon as she powered her way along the northern coastline. She had enough time to ponder how to make last night never happen again. “Okay, you might be single for the rest of your life and never marry. That doesn’t mean you can’t find friends and start enjoying your life here,” she told herself as her legs pushed her along the winding cement path.
By the time she arrived back home she stunk on the outside but felt renewed on the inside. “Starting today, you are going to make small changes. More exercise, better food, and open your eyes to new things, take every opportunity that presents itself, even if you think you will fail at it. See the difference these small and simple changes can make. See how that goes, just make the commitment to have a go,” she said to herself as she wheeled her bike back through the gate that led to her staircase. Kylie parked her bike against the stairs and took her wheelie bin out to the kerb ready for collection the next morning.
She carried her bike upstairs and wheeled it over to rest against the linen cupboard then she put the bourbon soaked mat and her pyjamas into the washing machine with some washing liquid. Undressing at the washing machine, she threw her clothes straight into the barrel. On removing her Lycra shorts she felt something sticky. Unable to see what it was, she walked to her bedroom mirror and turned around to see a flattened smiley face.
“Bum Face!” she said happily, putting her hands up to her mouth as she flashed back to the previous night’s comical conversation with her rear.
“Wow. That was a m-ASS-ive effort you put in today. I’m proud of you!”
“Thanks Bum Face. But you gave me the kick start I needed this morning so it was a team effort,” Kylie replied.
“And I’ll continue to do so. You’ll turn from Nottie to Hottie in no time!”
“Sounds good. Well these duds need a wash so I’m going to have to deface you.”
“Mm-kay.”
Kylie removed her Lycra bike pants and peeled off the sticky tape face. As she slipped off her underpants she felt a very pronounced welt that seemed to take up half a cheek, on both sides of her bottom. “What the?” she said turning her head around to the mirror and giving herself an atomic wedgie so she could see both welt marks clearly.
“Cor! That looks like the fricken Millennium Falcon cockpit! How did that get there?” she said in total awe. Grabbing her handbag from beside her bed, she rustled through it to find her camera and her mobile phone. She took photos of each cheek separately on her phone and then again with her camera, plus full shots from the reflection of the mirror. None of the footage was gratuitous, it was only skin. Although both cheeks were sore, she was in awe of her new bum prints and couldn’t believe the image that had presented itself on her behind, having been a life-long Star Wars